Weight - 43lb 8oz (15lb 12oz - silvers)
Catch - 8 Carp, 15 Perch, 4 Bream, 2 Tench, 2 Roach, 1 F1
Weather - Bright start, clouding over, rain later
Match - Lands End Winter League - rd 1
Placing - 13th out of 35 overall, 9th out of 12 overall section, 2nd in section silvers
Being the first round of the league, I didn't mind which lake I drew, however p13 was fairly low on my wish list, since it hasn't showed much recent form. With all the rain during the week the somerset levels had turned into one massive lake and Mike had to pump water out of the lakes so we could get on the platforms.
Because I had to do some gardening down the left hand edge, meant I was a little late starting, but I managed to feed micros & groundbait at 11.5m and caster down the left hand edge on time and started fishing about 10mins later.
I went straight out towards the aerator with corn and caught a carp and a tench, but with no more showing it was time to cup in some micros, really in response to Mark on p11, who after moaning like hell about his peg was catching carp on pellet over micros.
My 11.5m line only produced a pound skimmer all match, which was a real surprise, having done well recently over groundbait & pellet. Whether it was because the water was more coloured I don't know. I had also kept topping up with a small amount of pellet by the aerator, but again this failed to produce.
Fortunately the left hand margin, produced a number of perch, but nothing bigger than 8oz, along with a decent F1, a 3lb tench and a couple of small carp.
With 2 hours to go I thought I was doing OK. Mark was still catching but those carp would not come my side of the rope. At one point I thought I would start catching at 15m towards the island where I had been feeding 4s by catapult. First put in resulted in a carp, then I had 3 decent skimmers all on 4mm expander, but after this initial run of fish it was back to having to wait a while of a bite.
I had also been feeding caster towards p14 platform, but when I tried there I didn't have a bite, so ended up dumping caster & corn in an effort to pull in a few fish without success. Dale was on p15 and if there are any carp about he usually catching a few, but today he really struggled, which suggest there wasn't too many in this part of the lake.
In hindsight, I think I would have had my 11.5m swim at 8m and fed a metre or 2 off the aerator. Also I could have struck with catching down the left hand edge, catching perch, but I couldn't go further than 13m due to sunken branches at 14m. Over recent years, its been noticeable that if you want a weight of silvers, that the perch and chub which you would catch on maggot/caster are becoming less dominate and the skimmers which are growing on are becoming more important and generally caught on pellet. So sticking with catching those perch would have meant not catching the skimmers.
In the end I was disappointed to be 9th in section, i thought I had down better, although my carp where on the small side, however the majority of weights came from the form pegs. The only good news was coming 2nd in section in the silvers, picking up by default. The next round for me will be on Johns (no3) Lake on 9th Dec.
1st 104-10 - Mark Poppleton - p11
2nd 82-11 - Mike Duckett - p22
3rd 75- 4 - Criag Edmunds - p26
4th 60- 8 - Tom Thick - p17
5th 60- 6 - Tom Mangoll - p3
6th 60- 1 - Bob Gulluck - p68
Silvers
1st 17- 8 - Tom Thick - p17
1st 17- 8 - Mark Brennan - p31
3rd 15-13 - Bob Gulluck - p68
4th 15-12 - Ken Rayner - p13
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