Catch - 35 Skimmers, 1 F1
Weather - Mostly cloudy, but warm and light winds
Match - England Ladies Fundraiser
A new venue for me and one I have always wanted to fish. Today was a fundraiser for the England Ladies team which had originally been scheduled for the Glebe, but following an outbreak of KHV has closed for a short period.
Travelling up with Chris Fox and Tony Rixon was mostly uneventful and we had a decent breakfast at a local Beefeater/Premier Inn. At the draw there were 60 anglers, which meant we were evenly spread around the main lake. Mark Poppleton had given me a run down of the pegs to draw and those to avoid. Unfortunately p106 was on the avoid list, plus my 10 peg section started with me going done to the famous p124. In other words there was little chance of picking up today, with the section in theory getting better the further down the section.
Mark drew p104, so at least I knew someone and Jason Adlam was on my right. I always said that if I didn't drew a flyer then my target for the day was to just enjoy myself and hopefully have a day either on the skimmers or F1s, since the carp seem to be localised to certain areas of the lake.2 methods feeders were set up, 1 heavy to cast as far as possible and a lighter one to fish at 20/25m over loose fed 8s. 2x poles rig 0.4g and 0.2g were set up to fish at 14m in 4ft of water with pellet. The final rig was paste down the margin, since today's match would be fished between 11.30 - 5.30, I was hoping for some zoo creatures to turn up late on.
After feeding 4 balls of F1 green with some 4s and corn at 14m, I started on the heavy method hoping for an early tug. On the 3rd cast I had one, but it fell off shortly afterwards and I think it may have been a F1 rather than a carp.
Have to say I do tend to a get a bit bored fishing the tip, but after that fish loss I felt obliged to have a couple more casts on the method, but to no avail.
So with nearly an hour gone, it was time to switch to the pole, where I had been pinging 6s over the top. After an initial slow start I started picking up some decent skimmers up to 3lb on the lighter rig and banded 6s (due to the flat calm conditions), but it wasn't long before I had to change to the heavier rig and 4mm expander, as the wind picked up slightly I had some ripple to fish into. It was noticeable that when ever the ripple disappeared, getting a bite became harder, but generally I was enjoying myself.
When ever bites slowed, I fed a soften ball of groundbait and maintained pinging 6s over the top. Switching to the method only produced a skimmer and a F1. Due to the flat conditions I did change tact to fishing the straight lead (which I found out after the match was catching further down my section), but no joy. So a case of the right tactic, but no fish to appreciate it.
The last 90mins proved to be the most difficult. The lake in front of me had gone flat calm, whilst most of the anglers opposite were all catching carp down their margins in the ripple.
My margin didn't produce a single bite and I did feed a lot of pellet to try and draw them in. My only regret was not setting up a proper pellet waggler rig to fish over the 8mm pellet, since Mark in the 45mins probably put 30/35lb into the net to win his section.
 |
| Mark playing a last minute carp to win his section |
Overall a really enjoyable if not long day. The weights that beat me in the section all had carp and my gut feeling was there weren't many carp in my area of the lake. Even Mark only caught a couple of them late. Perhaps I could have weighed more had I stayed on the tip, but I probably wont have enjoyed it as much.
No comments:
Post a Comment