24/03/24 - Harescombe - Meadow Lake

Weight - 5oz

Catch - 1 Roach

Weather - Cold during the week. Bright and sunny, with a cool NW breeze

Match - Teams of 3 (36 fished) - 11th of out 12 section

The last round of the teams of 3 and we had a very outside chance of a top 4 position assuming we won the day and others messed up.

I was on Meadow and handed p2 which was on the dam wall for the first time. Looking at the past results, it showed 1lb came off the peg in the last round and 6oz in the first round. However, there had been a 1^st and 3^rd off the peg, which would have mostly been caught on the waggler.

When I got to the peg it was quite tight between p1 & p3, which meant I didn’t have much of a margin and the strong NW breeze was off my back. To be honest I didn’t fancy it but I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was.

My one and only fish came after 90mins on dead maggot at 13m, I did hook a carp 30mins later which felt like a big fish, although it may have been a foul hooker, but the hook pulled out after 5mins so will never know.

I tried the straight lead, the waggler with pellet or maggot and shallow on the pole, but the wind had pushed the fish out of the area. I had also kept a short meat line topped up, where I thought I would get at least one carp, but I never had a bite.

Surprisingly I didn’t come plumb last as someone only weighed 3oz and to illustrate how hard the lake fished 1 6lb carp would have got me 6^th in section. The whole lake had just switched off, probably not helped by the recent colder weather and the exposed nature of the lake whereas the more sheltered Field Lake fished well.

A really disappointing day and I probably wouldn’t change my approach if I was to fish the match again.

1.    84-  8 – Ricky Mills – p1 (Field)

2.    77-10 – Ed Bryant – p9 (Field)

3.    74-  3 – Andrew Black – p11 (Field)

4.    69-  1 – Ben Baron – p6 (Field)

5.    62-12 – Harry Hyde – p8 (Field)

6.    51-  8 – Jack Arpino – p2 (Field)