24/01/15 - Lands End - Match

Weight - 10lb 11oz - silvers
Catch - 25 Roach, 6 Skimmers, 3 Rudd, 2 Perch, 1 F1
Weather - Cold & cloudy. North westerly gusty breeze
Match - Open - 1st out of 8 - silvers (5th overall)

Following a long week at work I wasn’t sure whether I would go fishing today, so decided to let fate decide, i.e. if I didn’t oversleep I would go. As it happened, I woke up at midnight sweltering, because someone wanted the heating left on overnight, so that got turned off. Then at 3am, there was a loud banging, from where I do not know. Needless to say I tried to get back to sleep, but gave up at 4am.

Since I hadn’t booked in anywhere Lands End was the logical choice, particularly with the Winter League the following day.

Mike confirmed the lakes had been iced over the day before and whilst there was only the odd patch of cat ice left, it meant the fishing was likely to hard, with loads of melt water in the lake. There was also a cold north westerly breeze blowing, which also made it feel cold.

Home for the day was peg 21, which used to be a winter flyer, but hasn’t showed too much form recently. There is still a lot of fish in p24 and p1 at the moment, yet last year it was a dismal draw. I think because the water level is still down by about a foot, it’s changed the dynamics of the lake. For company I had Mike Duckett on p19 and Jim Jenner on p24.

The main rig for the day was SM Chimp 0.3g > .10 > 18 silverfish pellet to fish down the track. I also set up a heavier rig if the carp showed up, plus a maggot/caster rig and a prawn rig to fish by the pallets either side of me.

On the all in micros and 4s were deposited left and right at the bottom of the far shelf, plus caster under the pallets and finally some caster by the island.

Well the first hour was very slow, I didn’t get a bite on anything, from anywhere. On the hour mark I had an F1 on maggot, followed by a micro perch on the second hour mark.

It looked like it was slow for everyone, both Mike and Jim had caught a few fish, but no-one was running away with it. Since I couldn’t catch on expander, I had switched to feeding micros with maggot, with maggot on the hook. This brought a response from small roach, but at least I was catching something and hoped the activity would draw in some better fish. I had some slightly better roach later on plus a couple of small skimmers. I had also cupped in a ¼ cup of micros/caster/dead maggot 13m to my right at 45 degree angle which produced 3 decent skimmers up to 3lb, all on single maggot.

I was surprised the perch didn’t show in any numbers, particular on the prawn, which usually provides an instant bite if big perch are in residence.

As the match progressed I couldn’t see me overtaking Mike or Jim, so concentrated on the silvers and actually quite enjoyed my day, despite the hard condition, which was reflected by the low weights.

1^st 39- 4 – Mike Duckett – p19
2^nd 28- 0 – Jim Jenner – p24
3^rd 19-10 – Dave Wescott – p11
4^th 19- 6 – Bryan Hadley – p13

Silvers
1^st 10-11 – Ken Rayner – p21
2^nd 5- 8 – Mike Duckett – p19
3^rd 5- 4 – Dave Wescott – p11