14/10/23 - Goodiford Mill - Match Lake

Weight - 32.540 (71lb 9oz)

Catch - 20 Carp, 3 Skimmers

Weather - Cold overnight. Mostly sunny and breezy

Match - Uzit Bomb & Feeder Series - rd 2 (17 fished), 2nd in section, 4th overall

The 2^nd round of the Uzit Bomb & Feeder league. As quite a few anglers weren’t keen on returning to Trinity Waters the remaining rounds were changed to Goodiford Mill.

Must admit I wasn’t best pleased, as it meant a 200-mile round trip and the venue is a bit of a snag pit. However, the decision was made in the best interests of the league.

I drew p36, which put me in a shallow corner and to be honest I quite fancied it, although following yesterday’s heavy rain yesterday and a cold night was cause for concern.

I started on a small method to the far trees with a mixture of 2mm P-Nut pellet soaked of Green Betaine and Dark Crushed Expander groundbait with a 6mm yellow or orange wafter, pinging 6mm P-Nut pellet over the top. After 60mins I had 5 fish, before the swim died, however the cross wind had picked up and I had to feed 8s, but the swim was never the same.

I had also been pinging 6s to my left towards the end bank and caught a couple of fish on meat, but after 90mins my swim just died with only 2 fish over the next 90mins.

Up to this point I was winning the section, however Jacko next to me started catching by the small island to his left and to my right. I had been pinging 6s towards the island although so far, I had resisted the temptation to fish the swim due to overhanging branches and judging by the amount of line and rigs in the tree it looked like an anglers Christmas tree!

As I couldn’t get a bite elsewhere, I had no choice but to give it a go. Fortunately, I could get reasonably close and only caught a trailing branch once, and only pulled out of 2 fish trying to stop them making the underwater snags. Initially I fished a small tea bag filled with micros and fished an 8mm P-Nut pellet and later swapped to the method.

As a back-up I fed meat short, hoping to catch some bigger fish late on, however this only resulted in 1 skimmer. I also tried the left-hand bank a couple of times and never had another bite and only had 1 more fish from the far trees. I just felt the fish had drifted out of the corner.

In the end the lake fished harder than some expected, so I ended up 2^nd in section behind Jacko who won the match and now lie 3^rd in the league.

1.    40.920 – Steve Jackson – p34

2.    39.890 – Kev Crouch – p3

3.    39.800 – Dave Romain – p28

4.    32.540 – Ken Rayner – p36

5.    24.030 – Paul Homewood – p51