08/11/14 - Emerald Pool - Emerald

Weight - 11lb 6oz
Catch - 34 Skimmers, 5 Hybrids, 2 Perch, 2 Roach, 1 Rudd
Weather - Wet & windy start, clearing later
Match - Silverfish League - rd 3 - 3rd out of 7

Sometimes you have to question your sanity, as I was setting up on peg 1 in the wind and rain for the 3^rd round of this silverfish series. Unfortunately we had 2 no shows, Barry let Dom know he couldn’t make, but Simon decided just not to turn up. As a fellow match organiser, it is incredibly frustrating when people do this and I don’t understand why people think it’s acceptable.

 

Anyway, peg 1 was on the right hand side of the small island. So far it won the first match, but came last in the 2^nd match and carp can be a problem, so it was anyone’s guess how it would fish. Having said that, I thinks it’s fair to say winter finally arrived this week, with much colder overnight temperatures.

Today was at least milder, but it was raining hard and the wind was blowing straight up the lake left to right. I set up 4 rigs to cover all eventualities.
-  Chimp 0.3g > .10 > 20 silverfish maggot (top 7)
- Jolly 4x14 > .10 > 20 silverfish maggot (top 4 & margin)
-  Chimp 0.4g > .10 > 18 silverfish maggot (in case I started bagging or the wind really picked up)
-   0.2g shallow rig

Based on the last match, decided to simplify my approach, so on the all in, only 2 swims were fed, leaving plenty of space to move into if required. On my top 4 a small ball of groundbait/caster was fed and my top 7 got 2 small balls/caster.

Starting on the top 4 I soon had a perch, and then hooked 3 carp. A switch to the top 7 line and I started to catch, but it was slow going. In fact everyone seemed to be struggling and not what we expected.

The next few hours was a case of switching lines and working out how to feed. Actually found it best to feed a small ball of feed with caster, leave it alone for a 10mins or so and I would get a run of skimmers, before they back off again. At one point early on I tried the shallow rig, without success.

The top 4 line proved to be really disappointing, which had been feed with caster and only produced a few skimmers/hybrids. So this was binned and I started feeding caster in the margins hoping for a tench or 2. I also started another top 7 swim to my right. This worked a little better, providing a few more skimmers, but it was still hard going.

Fortunately the rain stopped after a couple hours and it was a lot brighter, which seemed to coincide with the fishing slow down even further. From the anglers I could see, I thought Tim opposite on p5 may be ahead of me thanks to some tench, but everyone expect for Dom were struggling for bites and thankful the match was only 5hrs instead of 6 hrs.

The last hour for me proved to be difficult as the carp became more active. I tried starting 2 new swims, but only had 1 skimmer and several lost carp.

I was first to be weighed and Dom thought I would have enough to claim 2^nd and that was the way it was looking until John Barker on p8 put 29lb on the scales made up of quiet a few tench.

1^st – 29-11 – John Barker – p8
2^nd – 27-14 – Dom Sullivan  - p6
3^rd – 11- 6 – Ken Rayner – p1
4^th – 9- 8 – Kev Jeffries – p7