Monday, 23 May 2022

22/05/22 - Durleigh

Weight - 12lb 13oz
Catch - 2 Bream, 5 Skimmers
Weather - Sunshine and cloudy later. 
Match - So Simple League - rd 4 (18 fished) - 5th overall, 1st in section

Just the 1 match this weekend and it was the 4
th round of the So Simple league on a moody Durleigh reservoir. As usual the shallows was the place to draw, however I drew p9 just before the spillway which meant I was fishing in what turned out to be a tough section, including Karl Turner (venue expert), Simon Poynter (bloody good angler) and Elliot Fay (chief wind up merchant). 

On the all-in I spent 25mins feeding a mix of FA1 & Baninion RTGS, 4mm pellet and fizzers at 66m via a large rocket feeder. Elliot on p10 in the meantime spent nearly an hour spombing 4kgs of pellet and since we were sat quite close to each other I didn’t feel the need to feed much more! When Elliot eventually started fishing, he netted a 4lb bream 1st cast, soon followed by a smaller one and we both thought great there are a few fish in the area.

I started on a 60g XR banjo feeder with dead maggot, but the small fish were plucking at the bait, so switched to a 6mm yellow gofter and I soon had my own bream of nearly 5lb, plus a 12oz skimmer.

It was an hour before I caught another bream of 4lb, hoping for a few more, but by the halfway point none were forthcoming. I even tried leaving the feeder in for 30mins without success.

In the meantime, I had been feeding small balls of groundbait at 25m and caught 2 small skimmers on dead maggot on a small cage feeder. A better feeder angler would have caught more, but at least it showed the smaller fish were starting to show closer as it warms up.

Within 90mins remaining I felt a few fish would be caught so switched back to the long line going 2m past where I was fishing, topping with 5 feeders of bait. This quickly produced 2x 1.5lb skimmers, but nothing else. In that time both Simon and Karl caught big bream, so I was willing my tip to go round, whilst hoping Simon and Karl didn’t catch another.

To be honest I was convinced I would catch another bream or 2, particularly as Elliot had fed enough bait to create a new underwater feature, but it just didn’t happen.

By the all-out it sounded like it would be between Simon and myself for the section and fortunately the result went my way, beating Simon by 2lb. Speaking to Simon afterwards, he adopted a negative approach, when his positive approach didn’t work, fishing a single maggot at range catching a number of hand sized skimmers and roach. Food for thought next time.

As expected, the shallows provided the top 3 weights, but by winning my section it has pulled me up to 3rd in the league.

1.    73- 9 – Andy Seery – p17
2.    42- 5 – Gary Dennis – p16
3.    29-11 – Dave Wykes – p18
4.    20- 8 – Chris Ware – p5
5.    12-13 – Ken Rayner – p9

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