Catch - 11 Roach, 10 Skimmers, 2 Perch, 1 F1, 1 Hybrid, 1 Carp
Weather - Cold start. Mostly cloudy with a northerly breeze
Match - Winter League - rd 3 - 1st in silvers (15th out of 33 overall)
The 3rd round of the winter league and it was my turn for Match lake. With more anglers on the lake than yesterday the expectation was someone would be on a ball of fish and the favoured area would be the top end of the lake i.e. p11, p13 and p15.
In the knockout I had Gary O'Shea who drew p15, so it was going to be a tough ask to get through to next round, particularly when I ended up on p20, which during this series has been poor. However I was optimistic because yesterdays winner came from p19. As for my section Roger Crago was on p11, Judith drew p13 for Tony Rixon, Gary on p15, Joe McMahon on p16 and Dale Howson on p18. Paul Elmes to my right was in the next section on p22.
On the all in I started on corn without feeding searching the swim for some carp. I had a few liners in one spot, but no proper bites, so switched to a maggot rig off bottom, which just produced a couple of roach. I could already hear Tony and Gary catching and knew I was falling behind in the section.
With an hour gone I feed some Gonuts black micros plus some 4mm expanders to my right at the bottom of the shelf and caster to my left. Whilst that settled I tried maggot over a short caster line which I had feed for the previous hour, but never had a bite. I also tried caster down by the p19 pallet, but again no bites which was worry. In fact despite feeding caster here all match it only produced 1 roach.
Back to my long lines, by continually rotating left and right, the right hand swim started to produce a few skimmers including a couple of 2lbers to 4mm expander and a 7lb carp. The left hand caster swim only produced roach and a couple of small perch, so this was converted to a pellet line as well.
By going slightly longer left and right I managed to keep picking up fish and started to feel I might get a chance of picking up in the silvers and this became my focus for the rest of the match, because there were definitely very few carp in the area. I could see Chris Fox opposite on p5 catching a few F1s and skimmers and felt with 90mins left he was slightly ahead of me, although he tried telling me he only had 5lb.
Those last 90mins proved to be difficult as the fish backed off. A try on top of the shelf only produced a couple of roach, so not too much time was wasted here.
With 30mins left, I decided to dump 1/2 pot of micros into the left hand swim. First put in after 15mins I quickly had a decent skimmer on 4mm expander. A roach and then another decent skimmer soon followed to make me feel more comfortable about beating Chris. With 2mins to go a switch to the right hand swim produced a 1lb hybrid, so a really good last 15mins where I probably added 4-5lb to my weight.
Come the weigh in Tony and Gary did the business and I finished 3rd in section, but won the silvers which after yesterdays disappointment I was really pleased about. As for the overall league I'm now too far behind to claim a top 4 position, although in the Silvers league I'm in a good position lying 3rd overall
1. 132- 9 - Tony Rixon (Mosella) - p13
2. 104- 6 - Craig Edmunds (Mosella) - p55
3. 70-12 - Gary O'Shea (Preston Inv) - p15
4. 50- 9 - Adrian Jeffery (Bristol) - p37
5. 45- 8 - Dave Wescott (Lands End) - p32
6. 41-15 - Emma Drysdale - p7
1. 14- 7 - Ken Rayner (Colmic) - p20
2. 12- 0 - Chris Fox (Bristol) - p5
3. 10- 9 - Steve Hutter (Garbolino) - p66
4. 7- 4 - Joe McMahon (Bristol) - p16
5. 5- 9 - Mike Duckett (Lands End) - p36
6. 4-13 - Nick Chedzoy (Preston Inv) - p51
League tables below
League tables below
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