Weight - 75lb 12oz
Catch - 10 Carp
Weather - Very hot & sunny
Match - Club - 3rd out of 18
Well summer has finally arrived and looks like its staying for a couple weeks. The irony is this weather doesn't help with the fishing.
With 18 today on the lake, the fishing was never going to be easy and I really wanted a draw with open water, but peg 1 was my home for the day down the arm of the lake. Everyone said flyer, but I knew it wasn't, well not today. With so many on the lake the arm doesn't fish well and today the northerly breeze was blowing out of the arm, so I really fancied the pegs at the other end of the lake to do well.
Normally if there are fish about you will see the reeds knocking about, but not today, although there was the odd cruiser.
Starting on the paste, I lost my 2 carp in the opening 30mins one of which was definitely foulhooked as I came back with a scale. On the 40min mark I landed my first carp, however Andy on p25 (opposite to my right) already had 5 fishing to the spare pallet.
That fish was my one and only on paste, despite continually feeding and trying on & off during the match, which is unusual. The fish really didn't want to be on the deck.
Whilst fishing the paste and I had kept feeding 8s to the far side in preparation to fish the pellet waggler and had 2 carp relatively quickly, which meant after 90mins I was up to 3 carp, but that was it for the next 2 hours. Without any ripple the carp where just not interested and I was starting to feel unwell. Unfortunately I only brought 1 bottle of drink, thinking I had brought more, so I was feeling dehydrated and I had a really bad sore throat that started yesterday. I had to go for a walk and lie down, also Andy gave me some of his drink and I felt a bit better - Thanks Andy.
With 2.5hrs left and still only 3 fish in the net, it was looking like a bit grim. With the pegs in the ripple doing the best I wasn't expecting to pick up and considered packing up. However, today turned out to be a case of keep going and you never know.
Feeding the pellet waggler line seems to have brought more fish into the swim, but they kept shying away from the waggler, so decided to try the pole shallow on the long line. A further 5 carp on 8mm pellet over the next 90mins was slow going, but at least I was catching, before the fish backed off. I even tried fishing maggot without success.
I had brought some frozen caster, so in the last 30mins started to feed the caster which brought some fish into the swim and I managed 2 more carp.
Since we were paying top 5 (but no sections), come the all out I estimated I might get 5th or 6th. Andy's quick start slowed down, finishing also with 10 carp, so it would be close between the 2 of us. Ian on p7 had 14, but they only went 42lb, so I was still leading until we got to Chris on p13 who had 12 carp and I was bumped down to 2nd. Everyone knew that Craig on p14 had won, catching shallow on the pole, taking advantage of the wind that was blowing into that bank. I expected Roger on p22 to beat me, because when ever I looked down the lake he was playing a carp, however it turned out he lost 11. And finally Andy was last to weigh and his carp weren't as big as mine, so a surprising 3rd place.
On the way home a quick stop for a litre of water was soon downed.
1st 138- 8 - Craig Davidge - p14
2nd 79- 2 - Chris Davidge - p13
3rd 75-12 - Ken Rayner - p1
4th 69-10 - Andy Bradley - p25
5th 60- 4 - Roger Putterill - p22
6th 59- 0 - Dave Bradley - p21
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