Monday, 14 January 2013

13/01/13 - Plantations - Main Lake

Weight - 11lb 1oz (3lb 4oz - silvers)
Catch - 48 Roach, 3 Skimmers, 2 Carp
Weather - Cold & sunny. Slight breeze.
Match - Avon Angling Pole Only Open - 12th out of 20

Well winter certainly returned this week, but at least today we avoided yesterdays rain, which was replaced by bright sunshine.

I do enjoy fishing this lake, it is just a shame its an odd shape, which means its can be dominated by a few pegs. As such today's match was pole only to try and even up the playing field.

Initially I couldn't quite remember where p23 was, but when I arrived I was disappointed because it was in the top left hand corner and comments like "you wont win anything from there" confirmed what I already knew - I was in for a difficult day. The other issue was the cold north easterly wind which had been blowing into this end of the lake for last few days.

Since I couldn't see me catching too many carp, today's focus was silvers. Settling on 4 areas. The end bank to my right, where I hoped to catch a few perch under the tree, but I never had a bite here despite feeding maggot & caster all match. The 3 other areas was at 5m fed with caster initially, then loose fed pinkie. 14.5m at an angle to my left and 14.5m at an angler to my right. At the start 2 balls of black lake:mussel & squid with pinkie & caster was deposited in the LH swim and a pinch of micros into the RH swim.

Because my focus was silvers I had 2 rigs with .08 bottom and 22 silverfish maggot hook. A 4x14 jolly to fish at 5m & 0.4g Jean Francois to fish the longer line. My final rig was 0.4g HB chump with .10 bottom and 18 silverfish pellet.

Starting at 5m, after an initially slow start I caught 12 small roach, before they disappeared. I periodically returned to the swim without success, until I had 3 slightly better roach 30mins from the end, before they disappeared again.

On the hour a switch to the LH swim produced an immediate response from small roach. By the half way stage I had also caught 2x 8oz skimmers. As the match progressed the fishing became more difficult. I tried loose feeding caster over the top and topping up with a small ball of groundbait, which all worked for a short period of time. In the end I tried setting up a new swim a few metres away, which again produced a few extra fish, but I was struggling to catch any quality.

I kept my RH swim topped with micros and when I periodically tried it I was hoping for a couple of skimmers, but again only small roach on pellet or maggot. With 15mins to go I tried the swim again with maggot on the hook and when the float dipped, I struck initialling thinking at last a decent skimmer, but it soon became obvious it was a carp. Next put in produced a small roach. A switch to the pellet rig, produced a smaller carp on the all out.

Most of the weights today came from the right hand end of the lake, which wasn't a surprised considering the weather. But at least Tim Clark fishing the point opposite me provided everyone with plenty of entertainment.

1st 85-10 - Allan Oram (p27) - pellet over micros
2nd 75- 2 - Martin Lenaghan (p28)
3rd 61- 6 - Tony Rixon (p7)
4th 41- 1 - Mike Nicholls (p1)
5th 39- 2 - Paul Elmes (p39)
6th 24-12 - Bela Bakos (p8)

Silvers
1st 11-10 - Tony Rixon (p7)
2nd 9-12 - Martin McMahon (p3)
3rd 7- 4 - Phil Harding (p36)

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