Catch - 128 Carp
Weather - Thundery showers, becoming clear & sunny later
Match - Open - 1st out of 11
With no match at Rood Ashton, I had no plans to fish today, however a text from Larry said he booked House Pool at Stone End Farm. Originally I wasn’t going to fish but a further text from Larry stating his regulars and those who encouraged him to book Stone End Farm had let him down and there were still a few spaces available, so decided to give it a go.
Stone End Farm has 2
lakes just north of Gloucester and House Pool could just about fit 12 anglers
around a circular lake with an island in the middle. Reports suggested it was
full of small carp and in excess of 200lb would be needed to win, with the fish
being caught on your top set plus 1.I drew peg 5, which meant nothing to me and first impressions was I don’t have much of margin. To my right there was a tuft of sedges, which stopped me going right and to my left was a small reed bed, but no clean bank to fish tight against. On the plus side was the amount of fish showing themselves by my feet, I could pick which fish to catch if I wanted. To my left was Wayne and to my right was venue expert Larry who fished it once last week and proclaimed over breakfast that if you couldn’t catch a 100lb you might as well sell you your kit.
Today’s weather had changed significantly from the previous week’s hot sunshine, being replaced by heavy overnight rain. Fortunately as we arrived the rain eased and no doubt the change would impact on the fishing.
I had already decided to keep things simple replying on pellet & paste. Which meant rigs weren’t complicated.
- HB Redneck 0.2g > .19 > 12 carp feeder - paste
- Ackoo Carrat 0.2g > .17 > 16 B960 – pellet
- HB Shady Shallow > .17 > 16 B960 – shallow pellet
Plumbing up revealed a flattish spot @ 3m, before it slopped away, so decided to start here and hope the advice about fishing short was correct. In fact most people started tight to the margins.
On the all-in I went out with the paste rig with some 6s in the toss pot and caught straight away, in fact I got off to a bit of flyer. By the end of the first hour I had 25 carp, but it had slowed down a little. I tried the pellet rig and had a couple of fish, but it didn’t seem as productive as the paste. This period also coincided with a few complaints around the lake about it being slow. By sticking with the paste and feeding a small handful of 6s whilst playing a fish, I kept the fish coming regularly right up to the point when we had to have a mid match weigh in after 3hrs.
Mark was only 1 of 2 anglers I couldn’t and he reckoned he had over100lb, whilst I was hopefully my 66 carp would go 100lb, so we thought it would be between the 2 for us for the lead. However Ian on peg 1 surprised us both when he put 107lb on the scales to lead from Mark who weighed 103-12, I was lying 3rd with 92-8 and Carl was 4th with 89lb, so all still to play for.
The match re-started after what amounted to a 30min break, in which time I mixed up some more paste, tied a new paste rig (because the first one was definitely showing signs of wear) and I also got a couple more section of pole out of the bag to fish shallow at 11.5m, because there was a number of fish showing themselves and felt I needed another option.
On the re-start the 3m swim got another handful of 6s and I started shallow catching a few fish, but it wasn’t prolific. After 20mins decided that was enough of that because I wasn’t catching quickly enough and was soon started catching regularly on the paste. The swim got the occasional rest when I tried the margins, which never produced a bite all match which was odd, or to fish shallow. Fortunately the stamp of fish on the paste line seemed to improve a little, although I wasn’t confident my 62 fish would beat my first half weight.
Come the weigh in Mark said he struggled and weighed 77-8 to bring his total to 181-4, then Carl put 96-8 on scales to finish with 185-8 and I honestly didn’t think I would beat that. However my stamp of fish was better than expected weighing 105-0, which put me in the lead. Ian who was the first half leader said he struggled, which he did finishing with 164lb. It’s obvious to see why the venue is popular with pleasure anglers.
I think Larry may be selling his kit having only weighed 89-12, but took some consolation from beating his son Daniel who had 85-8 off the next peg.
1st 197- 8 – Ken Rayner – p5
2nd 185- 8 – Carl – p8
3rd 181- 4 – Mark Poppleton - p10
4th 164- 0 – Ian – p1
5th 147- 8 – Stitch – p3
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