Catch - 14 Carp, 11 Skimmers, 1 Tench, 1 Roach
Weather - Cloudy start, sunny later. Light breeze.
Match - Open - 2nd out of 20 overall (2nd in silvers)
With casters, worms, expanders and groundbait I was hoping for a day on the silvers to hopefully qualify for the all winners silvers final or failing that I had some of Andy Seery's Gonuts paste to try - it's very red!
With a fully booked Cary, 20 pegs were put into the coffee tin of dreams. I was first in and found myself on p99 where 114lb came off it last Saturday fishing the tip. I did consider just setting up the tip and nothing else but that would drive me insane. So also setup a paste rig, a pellet on the deck rig and finally a skimmer rig to fish expanders or worm.
The intention was to spend an hour looking for carp and depending on the response I would make a decision about whether to concentrate on the carp or silvers.
Feeding a small handful of 6s at 6m, I started on the paste landing 3 carp (losing 2, 1 of which pulled the elastic through the side puller - doh!) and a big tench, which the chap next to me fishing for silvers was too impressed about - lol. On the hour mark I had my 4th carp at 14m where I had been pinging 6s. Staying at 14m a further 2 carp were landed, plus a big skimmer, losing 2 others which shed the hook mid flight!
The fishing became more difficult during the middle part of the match, managing 1 carp on the tip fishing the conker. With no more bites from the carp a switch to the soft pellet rig produced a few skimmers up a pound, plus another carp, but it was slow going.
In the meantime Matthew Gronow on p96 had started to catch on the tip, fishing with a PVA bag and by the half way point was up to 7, the same as me. The problem was he kept catching and was soon ahead of me.
A couple more tries on the tip didn't produce so that was abandoned for the remainder of the match, concentrating on the 14m line. By continually pinging 6s, the fish started to settle properly and in the last 90mins I had fewer liners and more proper down the plug hole bites, catching mostly carp up to 14lb with the occasional decent skimmer, slowly making back the deficit on Matthew. A brief look on the 6m line didn't produce, but did manage one carp from the left hand margin.With 2mins to go the float buried and thought this fish would make the difference. However I was hanging onto the end of 14m's of pole whilst the fish was attempting to make its way across the lake. I thought it was foul hooked and it eventually turned when the all out was called. Fortunately the carp was hooked properly, it was just a very angry double figure common landed 10mins after time.
Matt was admitting to 15 carp, but only had a few silvers, so it was going to be close. As it turned out that last carp swung the decision my way, beating Matt by 5lb, but I couldn't beat Neil Gaff on p90 who finished with 178lb fishing the pole to the end bank.There was also a bit of a bonus when the results were announced because I came 2nd in the silvers as well to and a double bubble pay out - yay.
As for the paste, very happy with it. It mixes up lovely with a nice smooth texture and I caught mostly when mixed to a very soft consistency.
1- 178- 0 - Neil Gaff - p90
2- 158- 1 - Ken Rayner - p99
3- 153-14 - Matthew Gronow - p96
4- 136-14 - Martin Preston - p87
5- 135-13 - Roland Lucas - p77
6- 120-13 - Gareth Gronow - p109
Silvers
1- 26- 5 - James Rock - p105
2- 15- 9 - Ken Rayner - p99
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