20/02/22 - Todber - Ash

Weight - 49lb 13oz

Catch - 17 Carp

Weather - Increasingly wet and windy

Match - Winter League - round 4 (48 fished) - 4th in section

The 4^th and final round of the winter league, and my turn for Ash Lake. The weather was going to play a big part in the day again, with storms Dudley and Eunice creating havoc during the week, and strong winds up to 50mph were forecast for today.

The team draw put me on p68. Not a great draw this series with 70 & 71 being the dominant pegs in the section, so 3^rd in section was likely to be the best I could achieve unless the fish had moved.

On the all-in I started on the straight lead and punched meat cast to the far bank which resulted in a carp after 10mins. No more bites followed, but I noticed those catching to my right were on the method, so switched to a small banjo feeder with Blue Ice RTGs and a 6mm yellow gofter and caught 3 carp quite quickly before I couldn’t catch for over an hour.

I hadn’t set up a long pole rig as the forecast wind was due to increase. Instead, I fished a mini cage feeder, filled with meat and meat on the hook, and pinging meat over the top. Initially all I got were little knocks from skimmers, before eventually catching a couple of carp.

However, there just didn’t seem to be a volume of fish in my area of the lake as both Chris and Matt either side of me were also struggling. In an effort to make something happen I started catapulting small balls of micros to the far bank and kept pinging meat at 14m, as well as feeding meat and hemp on a 2+2 line.

Well in the end I alternated between the far bank and the 14m line but couldn’t catch more than a couple of fish off either line before having to switch. As for the short pole line, I foul hooked and lost 2 carp.

At the weigh-in I beat Chris and Matt, to claim 4^th in section, but the 3 of us were bottom on the lake and a reflection of how the past 6 weeks has gone for me.

As for the team, we were only 2pts away from claiming 5^th overall, but we couldn’t recover in time from the poor team draw in the first 2 rounds. Oh well, always next year.

1^st 224-12 – Craig Edmunds – p77 (HG)

2^nd 174- 6 – Dave Romain – p59 (HV)

3^rd 173-  0 – Guy Manton – p54 (HV)

4^th 172-  8 – Mark Poppleton – p88 (HG)

5^th 168-  0 – Lee Jan – p90 (HG)

6^th 165-10 – Andy Power – p84 (HG)