Weight - 18lb 10oz (7lb 9oz)
Catch - 4 Carp, 20 Skimmers, 4 Roach
Weather - Mostly cloudy, drizzle at times. Increasingly colder. Lake was up and coloured
Match - Open (14 fished) - 3rd in silvers, 9th overall
With the Winter League starting in 2 weeks, I wanted to get
back in tune with the venue.
On arrival at the fishery, it was obvious it had been
affected by the recent heavy rains, with debris in the road and a lot of
flattened grass where the brook had burst its banks. As a consequence, the
lakes were heavily coloured and a difficult day was on the cards.
We were all on the Old Match Lake and some of the pegs were
still underwater. I drew p8 which is a great peg under normal conditions and
when I arrived Andy had dug a trench to reduce the excess water more quickly
into Kingfisher which has its own overflow into the nearby brook.
As well as the colour, I was also concerned p8 is one of the
deepest and with so much extra cold water I wasn’t convinced the fish would
feed on the deck.
I started on the tea bag and then the method to the island
without success, but I only gave it 15 minutes. I could have stayed on the tip
(1st & 2nd caught this way), but to be honest I
wanted to try some new Uzit groundbait.
An early look down the margin and I bumped a carp down the
right side. Down the left margin I caught 2 small skimmers on 6mm expander, so
switched to a lighter rig fishing a 4mm expander meant quicker bites and
another couple of skimmers and a roach, but action was short lived.
Having tried for carp and only catching skimmers, I was happy
to stick with the silvers and hope the carp would make an appearance later on.
It was also an opportunity to try the Uzit 70:30 skimmer groundbait, which
mixed up nicely with and takes on plenty of water.
2 balls of feed with micros and dead maggot were deposited
at 13m. Whilst that settled I feed at 3+2 left and right where the lake
shallowed up, feeding small balls of Uzit dark crushed expander with micros
(boosted with Uzit pineapple) down the left and smalls of the 70:30 to the
right. The right-hand swim was definitely better catching on dead maggot.
As I feared I only caught 1 fish over the 13m line in the deeper
water and after 2hrs I just stopped catching and looking around everyone seemed
to be struggling.
Eventually with 2hrs remaining I managed to start catching a
few more skimmers, plus a couple of carp this time 10m to my left, over small
balls of dark crushed expander & micros, before this line also died.
The last 45mins was pretty quiet hoping for a few units to
turn up down my margins which they never did.
In hindsight I wish I had brought some live bait as I would
have caught more silvers and potentially won the silvers. Either way, as
expected the lake fished hard.
1.
84- 4 –
Alan Smith – p14
2.
60- 0 –
Richard Rogers – p17
3.
53-15 – Chris Telling – p12
4.
42- 7 –
Andy Dixey – p4
Silvers
1.
9-15 – Chris Telling – p12
2.
9-14 – Baggy – p13
3.
7- 9 –
Ken Rayner – p8
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