Weight - 38lb 12oz
Catch - 11 Carp, 6 Skimmers, 5 Roach, 4 F1, 1 Crucian
Weather - Gales! and some showers
Match - Winter League - 2nd out of 6 - section. 24th overall
Apologies for the lateness of this blog, but I haven't had much spare time this week.
Todays match was the final round of the Winter League and I was lying 6th with an outside chance of breaking into the top 4 paying positions, but needed a minimum of a section 2nd and at last 2 others to drop points.
With Mike away at trade show in Cornwall, I let his wife draw p46 for me. Not what I wanted, but as the draw was completed I managed to avoid Tony Rixon, Rod Wootton, Adrian Clarke and Craig Edmunds in my section.
Since I needed to target a section win a positive mental attitude was required and with that in mind I was hoping to catch what I could on pellet, then switch to meat late on. Starting at 13m fishing (SM Chimp 0.4g > .12 > 18 silverfish pellet) 4mm expander over 4s & micros was quite an achievement considering the gales, but fortunately the wind was coming in from the south west which meant I was slightly sheltered from the worst of the wind.
Instead of toss potting bait, decided it would be easier in the wind to pot a small amount of pellet every 2nd or 3rd fish. This worked with some skimmers, F1s and a couple of small carp, but the wind was switching more to a westerly direction blowing straight down the lake and it was increasingly difficult to present a bait.
In the meantime I had been feeding meat & pellet down the left hand margin. After only producing a couple of roach early on, I then caught 2 carp in 2 put ins later on, which I thought would be the start of catching a few, but disappointingly that was it from the margins.
All the fish so far seem to have been caught from the other side of the lake. I did ask Paul Faires opposite on p66, who had caught from the off to push some carp over my side. As for my side it was much more of struggle. Chris Fox on p41 was targeting the silvers and the only person who seemed to be catching was Jim Jenner on p50 and judging by the amount of elastic coming out of his pole and the time it was taking to land fish I suspected he was catching some proper fish.
My short line did produce 1 small carp, but I was going nowhere fast. Despite the wind I got the feeling that some carp were hanging around the island and had started pinging pellet. First drop in with 6mm expander at half depth resulted in a carp, then an F1. The rest of the match was a case of catch a couple of fish from the island either on 6mm expander or 8mm pellet, before trying the margins. The wind was really frustrating, because I couldn't fish 16m into the gap, where I was convinced I would have caught much more, but for the wind.
My the all out, I was fairly sure Jim had beaten me, by vurtrue of catching some bigger fish, which turned out to be the case. As it happen the 7lb of silvers I caught early on proved decisive as both Kieran Guppy on p45 and Bob Wheeler on p42 had caught some better fish late on.
Overall the whole venue fished very well and I managed to sneak 4th place in the league, just beating Paul Elmes who had the same number of points, but 24lb less weight over the league. From the pegs drawn this year I was pleased to have claimed 4th, which made up a little for missing out by one place recently in the Todber League and Emerald Pool silverfish league.
Thanks to those who fished the league and despite all the piss taking usually at my expense I hope the majority enjoyed the league. Next year I will be looking to tweak the league a little to try and improve it further . Dates will be supplied shortly.
1st 209-12 - Sean Townsend - p22
2nd 172-12 - Tony Rixon - p68
3rd 140-10 - Bob Gullick - p13
4th 134- 3 - Kev Molton - p28
5th 125-15 - Mark Poppleton - p19
6th 121-11 - Paul Faires - p66
Silvers
1st 39- 7 - Nigel Bartlett - p20
2nd 30-12 - Russ Peck - p15
3rd 23- 8 - Martin Pettifer - p7
4th 20-10 - Mike West - p11
5th 16- 6 - Gary O'Shea - p25
6th 10-10 - Nick Chedzoy - p32
League top 4
1st Tony Rixon - 29pts
2nd Nick Chedzoy - 27pts
3rd Steve Seager - 26pts
4th Ken Rayner - 25pts
Silvers League top 2
1st Chris Fox - 28pts
2nd Gary O'Shea - 27pts
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