17/02/22 - Goodiford Mill - Main Lake

Weight - 16lb 3oz (5lb 14oz - silvers)

Catch - 3 Carp, 21 Skimmers, Roach, Perch and Gudgeon

Weather - Increasingly windy, mostly cloudy with sunny periods

Match - So Simple (18 fished) - 14th overall, 4th in section

A message to Andy suggesting a practice session at Goodiford before the start of next weeks league, turned into an 18 pegger. We had the whole lake, so plenty of space, although there were very few pegs that didn’t have a snag of one sort or another in it.

Ideally, I would have preferred to draw around the main island; but I ended up on p38 at the bottom of the right hand arm and the shallowest peg on the lake. I really didn’t fancy it, although I was assured it has won matches in the past, but l just felt it had the look of a boom or bust peg.

At the start the wind was very manageable and I set up a swim at 14.5m to fish expanders, feeding 4s and micros. Starting on a small method, blue ice RTG’s and blue ice groundbait, with a 6mm yellow gofter cast towards the clean area of the far bank. With no bites after 30mins, I just felt it was too shallow, so tried by the sunken tree to my left, but again no bites.

A switch to the pole resulted in a few small skimmers on 4mm Janners, but the wind had picked up meaning I had to come back to 13m. I kept plugging away, switching to double dead maggot, but fishing was still difficult, although a big perch of 1-11 was a welcome addition. Ideally, I should have fished shorter for the silvers, as the wind was becoming increasingly strong, but I was hoping by continually feeding 4s and micros I would pull in a few carp. In the end the wind became too bad, and I had to put the pole away to save any breakages.

When the wind allowed, I had been feeding 8s towards the sunken tree and towards the end bank, and so far, I hadn’t had a bite on either the feeder or straight lead. With 90mins remaining, a switch from the method to a small 24g banjo resulted in my first carp by the sunken tree, which I promptly lost at the net. Fortunately, I netted 2 carp, plus a few skimmers over the next 40mins and thought I could have a strong finish, but the swim died on me and I couldn’t get a bite anywhere else.

By casting a little tighter to the tree, I caught another carp before the end of the match.

So, not great on the fishing front, but it was great to catch up with some people I haven’t seen for a while, as well as meeting up with some new faces who will be fishing the league. Overall, the fishing was hard for most, but what was evident is you can’t ignore those silvers as there were several good silvers weights.

Well done to Elliot on the comfortable win. Hopefully those carp will spread out a little for next week’s match and I can get a new drawing arm.

1^st 148-13 – Elliot Fay – p36

2^nd 60-14 – Kelvin King – p23

3^rd 32-12 – Mike Duckett – p21

4^th 24- 7 – Bruce Hunt – p28

5^th 23- 7 – Andy Seery – p2

Silvers

1^st 24- 7 – Bruce Hunt – p28

2^nd 20- 6 – Andy Seery – p2

3^rd 17- 3 – Chris Ware – p1