21/12/13 - Todber Manor - Park Lake

Weight - 23lb 4oz
Catch - 12 F1, 8 Roach, 7 Skimmers, 3 Carp, 1 Rudd
Weather - Windy! and showers
Match - Todber Christmas Match - 15th out of 27

I was looking forward to getting plenty of bites for today’s match, however forecast heavy wind & rain was going to makes things difficult. In the end 27 turned up and I found myself on peg 29, which meant any chance of winning had already gone. Although I picked up a section from p28 last month, with the calibre of angler fishing today a decent draw really was needed, as the photo below shows.

 

For company I had Steve Denmead on p30 and an angler I don’t know on p27, so at least I had some space, however it was upwind so wasn’t sure whether I could take advantage. Only 2 pole rigs today, 1x fish the margin/far shelf and another to fish down the track. I also had a tiny pellet feeder in case the wind got too much.

 

Ideally I would have wanted to fish tight across, however there were loads of brambles, plus the wind meant it I could only fish 14m. Starting on double dead maggot over micros, I had my first fish, as a small roach after 15mins. A switch to 4mm expander produced a few F1s, but getting any presentation was difficult. If I could hold the float still for longer enough I would get a bite, so there was definitely feeding fish.

 

Trying the tiny pellet feeder, surprisingly only produced a small carp and 2 roach. Fishing down the track at 6m only produced 1 F1 and a few skimmers & roach. With 90mins left of the 5hr match the wind seemed to getting stronger and fishing across was no longer possible. I had been feeding down the margin towards p28 and so far only had bites from small fish, however I eventually had a carp on pellet, followed by a bigger fish 10mins later. Unfortunately I lost the next 2 carp, 1 of which was definitely foul hooked.

 

Overall a disappointing day, which was badly affected by the weather. Well done to Des who made the most of an average draw.

 

1^st 53-15 – Des Shipp – p14

2^nd 48- 3 – Ben Bentley – p9

3^rd 46- 3 – Mark Harper – p5

4^th 44-12 – Faletto – p27

5^th 44- 4 – Addie Damon – p26

6^th 36-10 – Nick Chedzoy – p35