Weight - 63lb 7oz (7lb 15oz silvers)
Catch - 12 Carp, 7 Skimmers, 3 Crucians, 2 Roach, 1 F1
Weather - Dry start, but some very heavy showers
Match - Float Only Series rd 3 - 21st out of 40, 2nd in section
After a good breakfast at Shipham I arrived with enough time to walk around the lakes with Mike Walker who has only fished the venue a handful of times. The usual questions of where I would want to draw came up and to be honest I wasn't that bothered, but with 15 anglers on Johns lake I thought that might be the lake to avoid.
Mike drew my peg from yesterday and went on to win his section. I wasn't so lucky, with peg 45 which is probably one of the worst pegs on lake 3. It can occasionally produce but with Rod Wootton on p46, neither of us were looking forward to it. My 5 peg section included 41, 42 and 50 and neither Rod or I expected to pick up any coin today.
In the knockout I had Glenn Calvert, who was on p68, so at least we were on the same lake, but to be honest I didn't fancy my chances of getting through to the next round.
As you will see from Mike Nicholls blog I took to the boat. Mike has been very busy doing shows and hasn't had time to trim back the island foliage. As a consequence there was a number of sedges and brambles trailing into the water. After clearing my island of debris, which meant I could fish tight to the island, I cleared Rod's as well (I did consider dropping extra branches into his swim - lol).
My Captain Pugwash impression, meant I only just set up in time for the all in, but I had noticed a few fish milling around in the gap between the island so having a boat over their heads didn't have any ill effects on the swim.
Starting across on paste in the gap and I had 3 good size carp for just over 20lb after 30mins, which was a really good start and a bit of a surprise. Like yesterday the carp soon wised up to it and I started to get loaded of little dinks. A switch to the pellet rig revealed the potential culprits as smaller skimmers, which meant it was time to rest the swim.
Fishing along the island produced a few decent silvers which I would have been happy to keep catching to let my margin which was fed with hemp/meat and my island gap swim time to settled. However, Rod was now catching in the swim I cleared out for him and I knew Mike on p50 was also catching.
The forecast light rain, turned into a couple of heavy deluges and I was just pleased to have taken my coat from the car, unlike a couple of others who were deceived by the sunny start to the day.
The fish seemed to have been put off by the rain, since we all stopped catching. Fortunately I managed a couple more fish from the island on paste or pellet, but it was noticeable the pellet fish were a smaller stamp.
My margin swim only produced 2 carp, which was a disappointment and my down the track meat swim didn't produce at all. By the all out Rod had more carp than me, but I had the bigger stamp so it would be close. As it turned out my silvers swung the decision by 4lb.
Second in section is more than expected so I cant be too disappointed and I had hoped in vain Mike's 95lb would be enough to frame so I could pick up section money by default. However, there were a number of ton weights on match and speci lakes.
As for the knockout, Glenn beat me by 10lb - so well done Glenn.
1st 186- 4 - Tony Rixon - p38
2nd 175-11 - Kev Molton - p33
3rd 163-12 - Dan White - p13
4th 117-14 - Craig Edmunds - p3
5th 111- 5 - Steve Seager - p16
6th 102-12 - Mike Walker - p19
Silvers
1st 27-13 - Andy Hembrow - p34
2nd 16-15 - Kev Molton - p33
3rd 14- 7 - Mike Duckett - p21
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