28/06/25 - Harescombe - Doughnut

Weight - 64lb 0oz

Catch - 28 Carp

Weather - Hot, sunny and increasingly windy.

Match - Summer Series rd 3 (12 fished) - 2nd in section, 3rd overall

The 3^rd round of the Summer Series and I really needed a result to put me back in the hunt.

I drew p11, not a peg I would normally rush to, however the wind has been blowing up this end and p13 has been a good area recently. My section ran from p2 to p13 and could keep an eye on everyone with the exception of p2

Due to the water levels, I brought a platform, however due to the sharp drop off it slipped down during the match although fortunately not sufficient enough to warrant an adjustment.

Plumbing up the far bank and to be honest it was awful. I found a small flatish spot but it generally dropped off from a couple inches to 5ft within a couple of metres, so not ideal.

On the all-in I caught a carp straight away on paste fishing across, however the right to left wind had already increased making presentation difficult. A switch to fishing worm over the same line just wasn’t right as I was trying to fish over a small spot and the wind was buffering the rig around. I tried fishing the method to the far bank, but never had a bite, neither had Allan Oram (p9) to my right and the signs were a little ominous.

This meant I had to try my short paste line earlier than expected where I had fed micros and 4s. The first drop in over this line and it was obvious the wind had generated quite a tow and a slightly stiffer paste was required to stay on the hook.

It took a couple of attempts to get my first fish and by feeding a ball of micros started catching. After 2hrs I was up to 7 fish, Allan had 6 and Ronaldo on p7 also had 7.

Over the next couple of hours, I mostly stayed on the short paste line, occasionally trying the method for only 2 fish, but importantly I was gradually increasing my lead over Allan and Ronaldo.

With 2hrs remaining (6hr match), the wind had increased further which coincided with my short line fading, prompting a new short swim being fed to my left. I had also fed my left margin, which resulted in 1 carp – surprisingly this was my only fish from this swim.

With an hour remaining I stopped catching. I felt I may have overfed my short line, although the strong undertow may have been putting off the fish as Allan and Steve Partington (p13) were also struggling.

In the meantime, the wind had eased off a little allowing Ronaldo to start catching on the pole over his far line, over taking me.

My short line came back to life with 30mins remaining, but it was too late to pull back the deficit on Ronaldo who had a great last hour catching 25/30lb to win the section.

In hindsight, I was disappointed not to win the section after leading for so long, however p11 isn’t great so I was pleased to finish 3^rd overall. The result has pulled me up from 6^th to 5^th in the series.

1.    88-13 – Arthur Hicks – p20

2.    76-  6 – Ronaldo – p6

3.    64-  0 – Ken Rayner – p11

4.    58-  7 – Steve Brown – p22