Weight - 43lb 4oz (16lb 8oz - silvers)
Catch - 7 Carp, 7 Roach, 6 Perch, 5 Skimmers, 2 Tench, 2 Crucians, 1 Rudd
Weather - Cloudy, showery and windy
Match - Avon Angling Open - 8th out of 10 (3rd in silvers)
With a few days holiday left over to use by the end of year, I decided to book in at Lands End, however as the day drew closer the weather forecast became increasingly miserable and as I was driving down in the rain the office really didn’t seem a bad place to be. Fortunately the really heavy rain managed to stay away until the drive home.
With only 10 of us today we had plenty of space and I fancied a peg with the wind off my back. So I was really disappointed to draw peg 1 with the blowing through the gap in the trees into my face – not what I wanted. We were all fishing for 2nd when Tony drew peg 19 with the next peg to his left being 22. One day I will draw that peg, even by the law of averages I should have drawn it a couple of times, but once in 5 years is starting to grate a bit.
Recent form of my peg wasn’t consistant. In Saturdays match only 3lb came off it, although 63lb weighed in on Sunday, but with a cool wind blowing straight in, I wasn’t sure. The other concern was the water clarity. The colour does drop out of this lake quite quickly.
At least with this peg you have plenty of options. So 4s were catapulted to the bottom of the shelf by the island, groundbait & micros at 14m in open water and caster on top of the shelf along the left bank. I deliberately didn’t feed anything initially at the bottom of the shelf along the end bank to see whether I could mug an early carp on corn, because with no-one opposite the fish had plenty of room to back off and I felt a softly, softly approach was required.
After 20mins I only had 1 skimmer. A perch and a lost carp on caster (under my platform) came from on top of the shelf and a crucian from the open water swim on soft pellet. However after 3hrs I only added a couple of small carp and a handful of small roach on caster or maggot.
I had started feeding caster and little corn at the bottom of the shelf along the end bank, but after an initial spurt of fish that soon died. I had also been feeding caster on the end of the bush to my right, but again only a few small fish. I was seriously considering packing up.
Due to the wind I had been using a HB Chump 0.5g, however the wind wasn’t quite as bad as expected and I had a gut feeling having the olivette bulk in the clear water wasn’t right, so switched to a HB frostie 0.4g with a spread bulk. I also re-fed my open water swim with groundbait & micros, which I had left alone simply because I couldn’t see the float due to the continuing changing light conditions, but with lighter winds the problem wasn’t quite as bad.
The remainder of the match produced some quality silvers and a couple of carp on 4mm expander. Throughout I had been feeding 4s to the point of the island where I picked up a few more silvers & carp.
The bush swim eventually produced a quality tench and a perch after feeding a big handful of caster. About ¾ of my catch came in the last half of the match, but all a little too late. Had I switched rigs even an hour earlier I think I could have challenged 3rd place, but ultimately I wont have picked up.
Fingers crossed for a better draw on Saturday.
1st 144-14 - Tony Rixon - p19
2nd 69- 6 - Adrian Jefferies - p22
3rd 52-10 - Ziggy Slowinski - p15
4th 51-11 - Phil Harding - p13
5th 46-14 - Aaron Britnell - p3
6th 46- 5 - Adam Caswell - p11
Silvers
1st 24- 8 - Aaron Britnell - p3
2nd 21- 0 - Nigel Bartlett - p5
3rd 16- 8 - Ken Rayner - p1
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