23/03/13 - Lands End - Match

Weight - 78lb 0oz (6lb 10oz - silvers)
Catch - 14 Carp, 6 Skimmers, 2 Roach, 2 Perch, 1 Golden Tench
Weather - Cold & cloudy. Heavy rain the day before
Match - Open - 1st out of 11

Winter is still hanging on and today's weather was more like January. Ideally with the 2nd round of the pole only series at Acorns next week, I should have gone there today. However, with the poor weather, match attendances haven't been great and the fish just sit in the quiet water, which meant there was no real advantage to practising. Also the forecast was for a cold easterly wind and Acorns doesn't afford any cover, whilst Lands End does. Plus I think Lands End is a better fishery, particularly in the winter.

At the draw, peg 9 was put in, together with 7 & 11, despite my protests, because 7 can be a flier, but becomes very ordinary when 9 is in. I think the reason is due to the pegs being slightly narrower and shallower. Peg 3 was left out and it doesn't take a genius to know where the carp were sat during the day.

As for me p21 was my home for the day, with Keith Builder on 19 and Allan Oram on 24. 21 won the Wednesdays match, but with a days worth of very cold rain falling yesterday and overnight everyone was expecting a bit of a struggle. So it was a bit of surprise to see fish moving around, they must be really confused at the moment. The increased light conditions, means they need to think about spawning, however the water temperature is more like January.

4 rigs for the day. HB Chump 0.3g > .12 > 18 silverfish pellet (soft pellet down the track rig), HB Shindig 0.2g > .12 > 18 B911 (to fish corn down the track), HB frostie 0.2g > .12 > 18 silverfish pellet (top of the shelf), Ackoo Powertrap 0.2g > .16 > 16 carp feeder (hair rig double corn).

Due to the cold conditions, I started cautiously feeding a pinch of micros 14.5m to my right at the bottom of the shelf and some caster/dead maggot on top of the far shelf.

Starting on the double corn rig 14.5m to my left, the float didn't even settle I was already in, although it was hooked in the wing. My next carp followed 10mins later and this one was hooked properly, but no more followed so after 45mins I decided put some feed into the LH swim. A switch to the RH swim with pellet I lost a 2lb skimmer at the net, before netting 3x smaller skimmers, by rotating between the LH & RH swims.

By the half way point I had added another 2 carp on pellet from the LH swim and knew I was likely to frame, although it was close between Allan, Nick Duckett (p1) and myself. Nick was catching carp & few silvers, whilst Allan was catching some decent silvers.

I tried the top of the far shelf with caster, but never had a bite, so that wasn't tried again. I also tried by the p22 pallet where I had been feeding caster from the off, however only had 2 small perch. I did try again later in the match and caught a cracking 1lb roach on double caster, but no other fish, so that line was binned with 90mins left.

I had been feeding a pinch of pellet into one swim and fishing the other, but it became obvious the LH swim was the stronger of the 2, so at the half way point I started to catapult 4s into the RH swim simply to try something different. In the LH swim I started cupping in slightly more feed. By continually rotating between the 2 swims I kept catching mostly on pellet, included a lovely looking common of 11-10 and a 2lb golden tench. I also tried the double corn rig, which produced 1 carp and the shindig rig which produced 2 small carp towards the end on corn.

A couple of pots of corn/caster was dumped by the p20 pallet, but never a bite so didn't waste too much time.

In the last 2 hours, I pulled away from Allan and Nick. I could see that most struggled and the grapevine suggested that those I couldn't see were also struggling, so a convincing win in the end and it was nice to be drawn at the right end of the lake particularly after my last 2 matches.

1st 78- 0 - Ken Rayner - p21
2nd 45- 7 - Nick Duckett - p1
3rd 40- 5 - Allan Oram - p24
4th 29-15 - Mark Walsh - p13
5th 26- 2 - Keith Walsh - p19
6th 25- 8 - Tom Mangnall - p11

Silvers
1st 17- 3 - Allan Oram - p24
2nd 13- 0 - Tom Mangnall - p11
3rd 7- 1 - Nick Duckett - p1
4th 6-10 - Ken Rayner - p21

Lands End Winter League - Final Tables

Top 30 Overall League Table

		Lands End Winter League - 2012/13 (Overall Standings)
					Dropped Result		Final Total
		Name	Total	weight	Total	weight	Total	weight
1		Tony Rixon	20	318.93750	9	21.75000	11	297.18750
2		Jamie Parkhouse	20	238.25000	8	5.81250	12	232.43750
3		Mark Poppleton	24	299.37500	10	8.56250	14	290.81250
4		Craig Edmunds	21	281.31250	7	21.56250	14	259.75000
5		Nick Merry	21	234.12500	6	20.37500	15	213.75000
6		Adrain Jeffrey	23	243.81250	6	16.62500	17	227.18750
7		Mike Duckett	27	233.75000	10	8.18750	17	225.56250
8		Tom Thick	23	278.18750	5	31.12500	18	247.06250
9		Clint Wotlyla	26	250.81250	8	28.68750	18	222.12500
10		Steve Seagar	27	236.50000	8	14.25000	19	222.25000
11		Bela Bakos	28	260.37500	6	29.62500	22	230.75000
12		Mike Nicholls	31.5	173.87500	9	0.56250	22.5	173.31250
13		Paul Elmes	35	227.25000	11	11.62500	24	215.62500
14		Kev Molton	35	205.56250	11	0.00000	24	205.56250
15		Nick Duckett	33.5	216.43750	8	17.62500	25.5	198.81250
16		Anton Page	37	129.31250	11	0.00000	26	129.31250
17		Bob Gullick	38	156.25000	11	0.00000	27	156.25000
18		Mark Brennan	40	198.81250	11	6.43750	29	192.37500
19		Ken Rayner	40	208.12500	9	9.37500	31	198.75000
20		Allan Oram	43	147.62500	11	0.00000	32	147.62500
21		Paul Homewood	44	184.62500	11	5.50000	33	179.12500
22		Ray Bazeley	45	144.31250	11	0.00000	34	144.31250
23		Tom Mangnall	45	142.62500	11	2.75000	34	139.87500
24		Mike West	45	131.50000	11	2.43750	34	129.06250
25		Aaron Britnell	45	122.37500	11	0.00000	34	122.37500
26		John Bradford	46	96.00000	11	10.56250	35	85.43750
27		Matt Tomes	47	119.68750	10	40.93750	37	78.75000
28		Paul Haines	49	124.93750	11	16.75000	38	108.18750
29		Jason Radford	48	103.56250	10	20.50000	38	83.06250
30		Phil Harding	52	70.50000	11	0.00000	41	70.50000

Top 30 Silvers final League Table

		Lands End Winter League - 2012/13 (SILVERS Standings)
					Dropped Result		Final Total
		Name	Total	weight	Total	weight	Total	weight
1		Tom Thick	10	96.31250	3	4.31250	7	92.00000
2		Nick Merry	18	69.37500	8	5.18750	10	64.18750
3		Bob Gullick	23	76.62500	11	0.00000	12	76.62500
4		Mike Nicholls	19.5	61.81250	6.5	0.56250	13	61.25000
5		John Bradford	22	51.31250	8	2.62500	14	48.68750
6		Mark Brennan	27	64.25000	10	2.93750	17	61.31250
7		Craig Edmunds	26	48.62500	7	3.62500	19	45.00000
8		Tony Rixon	32	51.00000	11	0.00000	21	51.00000
9		Clint Wotlyla	32.5	37.62500	10	1.50000	22.5	36.12500
10		Mike Duckett	33.5	32.81250	11	0.00000	22.5	32.81250
11		Mark Poppleton	33.5	44.68750	9.5	1.12500	24	43.56250
12		Ken Rayner	34.5	40.68750	9.5	1.12500	25	39.56250
13		Mike West	33.5	32.18750	7.5	3.75000	26	28.43750
14		Tom Mangnall	37.5	47.43750	11	0.00000	26.5	47.43750
15		Jamie Parkhouse	36	32.62500	9	1.68750	27	30.93750
16		Paul Homewood	39	28.00000	11	0.06250	28	27.93750
17		Anton Page	40	30.18750	11	0.00000	29	30.18750
18		Steve Seagar	38	28.25000	9	1.68750	29	26.56250
19		Matt Tomes	35.5	32.37500	6	3.25000	29.5	29.12500
20		Aaron Britnell	41	34.31250	11	0.00000	30	34.31250
21		Nick Duckett	43	28.62500	11	0.00000	32	28.62500
22		Bela Bakos	43	25.81250	11	0.00000	32	25.81250
23		Adrain Jeffrey	43	25.43750	10	0.50000	33	24.93750
24		Paul Elmes	44	22.12500	11	0.00000	33	22.12500
25		Dale Howsen	44.5	21.87500	11	0.00000	33.5	21.87500
26		Kev Molton	48.5	18.37500	11	0.00000	37.5	18.37500
27		Allan Oram	50	29.31250	11	0.00000	39	29.31250
28		Phil Harding	50	24.50000	11	0.00000	39	24.50000
29		Pete Nurse	51	17.12500	11	0.00000	40	17.12500
30		Ray Bazeley	52.5	12.75000	11	0.00000	41.5	12.75000