25/08/24 - Hillview - Canal 1

Weight - 71lb 10oz

Catch - 25 F1s, 7 Carp, 6 Tench, 4 Roach, 1 Skimmer

Weather - Cool, cloudy and windy.

Match - Tackle Den (21 anglers) - 6th overall, 3rd in section

Todays match was over Moorhen and Canal 1, and everyone wanted Moorhen as it was likely the winner would come from here. Therefore, I was disappointed to draw p49 on canal 1 and a strong breeze blowing right to left down to Matt Greaves on p41 was going to be a challenge.

As I didn’t know which lake I would be fishing and I’m not in touch with the venue, I brought 4pts of maggot (in the hope of catching shallow on Moorhen), meat and corn. Having done well on meat recently I decided to start on this and see where the match took me.

As the wind was likely to increase during the match I decided to start across on 6mm meat, but soon switched to 8mm meat, toss potting meat and fishery micros. After an hour I had 9 F1s of varying sizes for about 15lb and a good start, matching Jason Crump on p47 who was fishing maggot short.

The 2^nd hour was a disaster. I managed to snag my rig on a root requiring a new hooklength, snapped another hooklength when a fish broke me and then a loose thread in my landing net somehow managed to wrap around my rig when I netted a fish, requiring a new rig.

Eventually I got back into a rhythm, however the wind was getting stronger. I had been feeding meat short and to be honest I was disappointed with the response and soon converted it to a short maggot line.

Due to the wind I also switched to fishing maggot across and catching F1s shallow, however the wind was just becoming impossible, and I had no choice but to fish short.

My maggot line produced a couple of F1s before they disappeared, which prompted a switch to my left margin (downwind) fishing meat. I soon added some proper carp and F1s before the swim died. Moving back to my short line, it was now full of small silvers and even feeding maggot heavily I couldn’t feed them off.

I had hoped for a strong last hour (5.5hr match) but it was slow going. The left margin produced the occasional fish and I eventually had to fish longer towards p48 platform catching my best fish of 8lb. I also caught a few fish down my right margin on 6mm expander.

Come the all-out I was a little annoyed with myself as that poor 2^nd hour cost me a possible section win, although the wind didn’t help either. In hindsight, I should have set up a pellet line when I realised the short maggot line wasn’t going to work.

As expected, the winner and second place came from Moorhen in the windward corner of the lake and Matt won our lake.

1.    96-15 – Steve Venn – p1 (moorhen)

2.    96-  6 – Andrew Black – p19 (moorhen)

3.    83-  3 – Matt Greaves – p41 (canal 1)

4.    82-  4 – Jason Crump – p47 (canal 1)

5.    73-13 – Cliff Dutton – p3 (moorhen)

6.    71-10 – Ken Rayner – p49 (canal 1)