Monday, 7 June 2021

06/06/21 - Todber Manor - Hillview

Weight - 137lb 15oz (8lb 10oz - silvers)
Catch - 45 Carp, 5 Bream, 2 F1, 2 Tench
Weather - Warm, cloudy and muggy
Match - Haines Summer League - rd 2 (23 fished)

23 of us on Hillview for the 2nd round of this enjoyable Haines Summer series. After my 1st round disaster at Lands End, being at the wrong end of the right section, I really needed a result and was disappointed to draw p50. My 8 man section was either side of the spit (p44 – p53) and with the breeze blowing into the 40’s, whilst I had the breeze off my back and flat calm, I thought I might struggle to compete.

Only set up 2 sections of pole and was going to focus fishing short, i.e. no messing about chasing (and wasting time) fishing shallow, like yesterday.

Starting at 2+1 on pellet, I lost 1 foul hooker, but no fish and a switch to paste brought no bites! So 15mins and no fish in the net. Allan Oram on p50 already had 3 or 4 carp on the pellet feeder to the far bank and my feeder rod was still in my bag, plus I could see the rest of the section behind me catching.

Rather than persist with the short line, I quickly set up a small 30g method with So Simple kriller sticky pellet and a 6mm orange gofter cast to the far bank. Fortunately, I started to catch and stayed on it for at least an hour, whilst priming my short line.

Surprisingly, I never caught a fish on the 2+1 line all match, which meant I ended up spending most of my time on the feeder.

Since the 2+1 line wasn’t producing, decided to start feeding meat on my top kit line instead, plus 4s and micros into my right- hand margin. Whenever I needed to rest the feeder line, I would switch to the margin, fishing the blue ice paste, but it was very slow. As for my meat line, there seemed to be a few silvers about as I caught skimmers and tench, which isn’t a good sign. It wasn’t until the last hour of the 5.5hr match that I started to catch carp short and down my margin.

Come the end of the match, I really thought I was looking at 4th section, as I thought I had about 140lb-150lb. Martin Pettifer (p48) was admitting to 200lb+, Andy ‘Numpty’ Eagle (p47) 160lb and Cosmo (p44) didn’t have a clue but was likely to have caught.

As it turned out we all over estimated! Some more than others, not that anyone took the piss about of Numpty for being nearly 40lb out. Fortunately, my 137lb 15oz took 2nd in section and 6th overall, which I was delighted about. Well done to Martin for winning the section and match, caught mostly shallow on pellet.

A really strange match, with most of my weight coming to the feeder. It was evident the fish were quite unsettled this weekend, probably due to the recent spawning rigours and very few big fish showed, at least in my section

1. 180-  7 - Martin Pettifer - p48
2. 170-  3 - Matt Banks - p57
3. 168-  8 - Dave Martin - p54
4. 143-10 - Steve Martin - p36
5. 139-  4 - Nick Veale - p55
6. 137-15 - Ken Rayner - p50


 

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