Wednesday, 22 January 2025

18/01/25 - Todber Manor - Hillview

Weight - 148lb 8oz
Catch - 46 Carp
Weather - Cold and cloudy
Match - Open (20 fished) - 2nd overall

Mark Poppleton ran another open and it was a full house with 20 anglers. Like everyone, I wanted to avoid drawing in the 30s and was very pleased to end up on p54.

On the all-in I started on the lead and bread, as 2 weeks ago p55 came 2nd catching mostly on the lead. I didn’t have any bites, but did have some liners and thought the fish may already be over my 13m pole line which I fed with micros and corn.

Switching to the pole was extremely frustrating as I struggled to get a proper bite, only landing 1 carp and losing 4. The peg is one of the deepest on the lake and I just felt the fish were hovering above the feed. In the meantime, I could see p52 & p53 down the arm of the lake catching well and Phil Hardwick on p55 had also caught a few long on the deck. I kept pinging pellet over the 13m line and did try it later in the match but I still couldn’t catch.

After an hour I only had 1 carp in the net, before switching to the left-hand bush at 11m, fishing at the bottom of the shelf where I had been pinging 7mm meat (flavoured in Uzit A-Krill cloud). By toss potting meat with some bubblegum micros, I had 8 fish very quickly to put me back in the race.

Over the next 3hrs I added a further 30 fish. Come the last hour the left-hand swim was slowing up and I felt I needed to have a good last hour to catch Dan Squires on p52 and Tim Martin on p50.

I started feeding meat at 2+2 and caught a few better stamp fish. I also dumped a cup of micros and meat down the right margin. Half an hour later it started clouding up and 5 fish in the last 15mins proved very handy.

I must admit it was nice to catch a few fish, particularly after last month’s struggles.

1.   
171-12 – Dan Squires – p52
2.    148-  8 – Ken Rayner – p54
3.    107-  2 – Tim Martin – p50
4.      96-  8 – Dave Brittian – p60
5.      72-14 – Sean Taylor – p53
6.      64-  0 – Mark Poppleton – p57

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