26/10/25 - Rood Ashton

Weight - 15lb

Catch - 2 Carp, 5 Roach

Weather - Cold, breezy & sunny start, rain later.

Match - Charity Open (22 fished) - 13th overall

Today’s match was a charity event in aid of Ian Barker who passed away earlier this year from cancer. All proceeds, which amounted to £800 would be donated to Prospect Hospice in Wroughton where Ian spent his last days.

The match was fully booked with 22 anglers. As such I knew it would be hard, not helped by a deterioration in the weather as a cold, wet and windy front came in. Therefore, a draw with some open water was required, so I was really disappointed to see p10 staring back at me. A proper no hoper in the top corner of the lake which is usually never used. I’ll be honest I nearly didn’t bother and had it not been a charity match I would have gone home.

Anyway at the peg I checked the water temperature which read 8.4c, a drop of 4c in a week just confirmed what I feared.

As expected, plumbing up revealed 4ft water up to 5m, before it shallows up further out. In the first hour I tried the method and straight lead cast as far as I dare but never had a liner. I even tried a maggot feeder, just to a get bite without success.

I had brought some maggot, just in case and had fed my short line with maggot over BMGX hoping to catch some roach. Well not even the roach were feeding, which can be a real pest in the summer.

With 2hrs gone I eventually caught a roach on my short line and then a carp much to my surprise that I gingerly played on 0.09 bottom. I did catch another carp with an hour remaining, again on maggot as I couldn’t get a bite anywhere else.

Matt Greaves had drawn p9 and we decided to have a pound, that I took, just beating Matt by 9oz thanks to my collection of roach.

1.    57-10 – Luke Sherman – p7

2.    49-10 – John Pearce – p18a

3.    38-  7 – Dave Keen – p12

4.    33-  0 – Steve Venn – p20

5.    32-15 – Andy Pegler – p11

6.    31-  7 – Dan Barnett – p19