Catch - 28 Carp, 2 Roach
Weather - Sunny and windy
Match - Airsprung AC - 3rd out of 9
A trip to one of my favourite summer venues, although reports suggested it hasn't been fishing well recently. With an interclub match at Barton Farm, numbers for this match were down on normal, but at least the pegs were well spread.
Peg 2 put me in the 2nd gap in the trees, which I didn't fancy because it doesn't offer much of a margin
I started on a small hybrid method with gonuts micros and a banded orange wafter, cast slightly to my left at 30m. After 3 casts and no bites a switch to an 8mm gonut pellet resulted in an immediate pull round. A further 6 carp followed before it went quiet.
In the meantime, I had been feeding 8s at 20/25m (aided by the wind) slightly to my right and switched to fishing 8mm pellet on the straight lead were I had regularly caught.
As the match progressed Kev Hanson to my left and Nick Merry to my right were both catching and we were all within a couple of fish of each other over the next couple hours. It sounded like the anglers on the far side were struggling, so it was just a case of keep catching.
Well that was the theory, however the 3 of us started to struggle for bites.
In the meantime, I had been feeding 8s at 20/25m (aided by the wind) slightly to my right and switched to fishing 8mm pellet on the straight lead were I had regularly caught.
As the match progressed Kev Hanson to my left and Nick Merry to my right were both catching and we were all within a couple of fish of each other over the next couple hours. It sounded like the anglers on the far side were struggling, so it was just a case of keep catching.
Well that was the theory, however the 3 of us started to struggle for bites.
I had primed my right hand margin with pellet & corn, but this only resulted in bites from roach. A cup of meat didn't improve matters. The left hand margin was fed with groundbait, but again no bites.
At 11.5m under the left hand tree were I fed pellet from the off, produced roach on 6mm expander. A switch to 8mm pellet resulted in 3 carp in as many put ins and then nothing. The fish really weren't settled.
Kev managed to keep catching a few more fish on the pole, but Nick's swim had dried up. I did manage 1 carp from the left margin and a couple more on the lead, although I had a run of losing 4 carp for no particular reason which was frustrating.
By the all out Kev was admitting to 32 carp, so I knew he had beaten me and Nick had 26, however most of his fish came to the feeder and for some reason the feeder fish tend to be quite small, hence the reason why I mostly fished the straight lead instead.
When we got back to the car park Nick joked that Mark had been quiet for the latter half of the match which meant he probably started catching and would weigh 100lb. As it turned out he wasn't far wrong. Whilst we struggled in the last hour, Mark picked up some big fish from his margin to claim the win.
1st 95- 0 - Mark Poppleton
2nd 93-12 - Kev Hanson
3rd 79- 4 - Ken Rayner
4th 76- 1 - Tom Ince
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