Catch - 32 Carp, 4 Roach, 2 Perch, 1 Tench
Weather - Sunshine & some thundery showers
Match - Open - 1st out of 11
I debated about whether to go to Acorns or Lands End. Checking
the Acorns website I got the impression the Saturday opens weren’t as well
attended as the midweekers, so finally settled on Lands End, purely because I
prefer it as a fishery.
With 11 booked in we were all on Match Lake and
reports suggested it has been fishing well, however with the recent up &
down weather I wasn’t sure it would continue. Mike earlier in the week had
topped up the lakes, which had stirred up the fish and the Thursday evening
match had fished well.
I had to smile when I drew 15, as it’s a peg I spent a
fair bit of time on and when I arrived there was a few fish moving around, so I
was hopefully of a good day. For company I had Tom Mangnall on p13, which has
been in good form recently and Nigel Bartlett on p18, who would focus on the
silvers.
The last time I fished Match Lake was back in the
spring, so I wasn’t sure what would work, so brought everything, paste, meat,
pellet, caster and maggot. Conscience I could end up confusing myself, when I drew the peg I
decided to focus on the carp, but still managed to set up far too many rigs and
only ended up using 3 of them during the day.
The plan was to fish meat @ 5m to my left at the bottom
of the shelf, paste/pellet to my right by the bush and pellet across. On the all-in I swung the long line rig to 8lber and
it took the 8mm pellet straightaway. I swung the rig at a couple more fish
without success and after 5mins they all disappeared. I had started firing 6s
at the far bank to my left and tried swinging the rig into the feed, but no
bites. My experience of fishing shallow at Lands End isn’t great and if you
keep firing pellet, the fish just frantically swim around chasing the pellet
and you end up foul hooking. So I decided to feed a pouch of pellet when I
playing a fish, followed up by a toss pot of 6s. Using a 3x8 float set to fish
the 8mm pellet on top of the far shelf, by lifting & dropping, I finishing
the 2nd hour with 11 carp and was a few fish ahead of Tom who was
catching down the left hand bank.
Before the match Mike asked Tom and Mike West on p11
whether they were OK if the aerator came on for hour at 1pm, which they both
agreed to do. Ultimately Mike was concerned that with the thundery weather
around he wanted to ensure his fish didn’t go belly up. Unfortunately for Tom
he didn’t catch during that hour. I also struggled and ended up trying further
right along the island. Although I had a
tench and a carp, it didn’t seemed right, so decided to dump some caster
fishing double caster on the hook, which brought 1 more carp, but also a few
roach, so that idea was soon binned and stuck with the pellet, finishing the 3rd
hour with 14 carp.
It’s always a nice feeling knowing that if you keep
going you are likely to frame and I was enjoying myself, despite the rain and
the odd thunder clamp.
After the wave machine stopped Tom started catching
again, but never ask him how many he has, because according to him I was miles
ahead, which didn’t really seem right, particularly when he had a run of fish
down his right hand margin.
My meat line turned out to be a waste of time,
producing only a couple perch and a roach. I don’t think the fish wanted to be
down the track in the deeper water. I had tried paste close to the bush earlier in
the match, but only had a couple of liners, so had decided to regularly feed
pellet by the p16 platform.
The fourth hour produced a further 5 carp, 4 from the
far bank and 1 down by the platform. The
5th hour was my best period adding a further 8 carp, before it
slowed down during the last hour adding a couple more fish from the p16
platform.
On the all out Tom said he only had 17 carp – yeah
right! I thought I had about 130lb, but I got a bit concerned when Tom plonked
125lb on the scales including 9lb of skimmers. So it was a lot closer than I
expected, but the rest of the lake seemed to have fished harder probably due to
the indifferent weather.
1st 128-14 - Ken Rayner - p15
2nd 125- 3 - Tom Mangnall - p13
3rd 79-12 - Scott Puddy - p1
4th 77- 0 - Dan Phither - p3
5th 67- 0 - Eric Fouracre - p22
6th 37-10 - Mike Duckett - p7
Silvers
1st 29- 1 - Nigel Bartlett - p18
2nd 23- 0 - Eric Fouracre - p22
3rd 13- 4 - Dave Wescott - p24
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