Monday, 19 August 2013

17/08/13 - Fishponds

Weight - 188lb 3oz
Catch - 31 Carp
Weather - Windy & showery
Match - Club - 1st out of 11

I haven’t fished our club water much so far this summer and was looking forward to todays match which would be fished between 2-7, but I wasn’t looking forward to the forecast wind and rain. Fortunately the rain wasn’t quite as heavy as expected, but the wind was as strong as expected.

11 members turned up and I found myself on p6, which meant the wind was blowing across me from the left and any thoughts of fishing shallow were soon dismissed. The depth in this peg varies widely from just over 6ft to my right and 2-3ft to my left. So 2 paste rigs (.19 > 12 carp feeder) were set up to fish each swim.

Each swim got a pot of 8s and I started in the right hand swim with paste. 45mins later I had 4 fish, but couldnt get another bite. Due to the wind I had to mix the paste a little stiffer than normal, but I didn’t expect the swim to die so quickly.

Into the left hand margin and it was obvious the fish preferred the shallower water and I was soon getting bites/liners, but was having a mare. Typically this shallower margin has smaller resident fish under the tree, which then bolt around the corner as soon as they are hooked, which was causing a few issues. However the main problem was finding a flat spot to fish onto, due to all the stone/boulders dumped in the swim to shore up an eroding bank. Also the wind, meant I couldn’t fish too long, due to the reeds blowing all over the place. After 90mins I had lost 3 rigs and several carp, mostly foul hooked.

A change of tact was required. Instead of toss potting the pellet, I started potting in the bait to force the fish down and I also setup a pellet rig (ackoo powertrap 0.2g > .17 > 16B960) which worked much better than the paste.

As the match progressed, the only person who I could see catching well was Andy on p10. After 2hrs he had a 5 fish advantage over me and was catching some proper lumps on pellet. Now that I had sorted out how to fish my peg properly, I felt I needed to have at least 3 or 4 more fish than him to overcome the bigger stamp of fish.

For next hour we both caught roughly the same number, but in the 4th hour I caught then overtook Andy, but was really conscious of the fact it would be close. Most of my fish still came from the left margin, whilst my right hand swim only produced a couple. The fifth hour was slow for both of us and I wasn’t confident that my 31 carp would beat his 27 and a bream. As it turned out there was only 1 fish in.

1st 188-3 - Ken Rayner - p6
2nd 183- 5 - Andy Bradley - p10
3rd 130-11 - Chris Davidge - p16
4th 123- 9 - Andy Lord - p3
5th 108- 1 - Glenn Putterill - p27
6th 85- 7 - Roger Putterill - p21

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