09/05/26 - Tunnel Barn - New Pool

Weight - 60lb 8oz

Catch - 24 F1, 6 Carp, 5 Perch, 1 Skimmer, 1 Gudgeon

Weather - Sunshine & cloudy

Match - Catchybait Open (58 fished) - 22nd overall, 4th on lake

With a view to practicing for the over 50s festival in 2 weeks I booked onto this Catchybait match over Club, Extension, House and New. Being a Catchybait match it meant natural baits only, caster, maggot and worm, but no groundbait or worm soil to be fed.

The draw put me on p40 New. A quick chat with a couple of locals confirmed what I thought. Not the best area, but at least I could try to win my 5-peg section.

Plumbing up revealed the deepest part of the swim was 3ft at 5m and at 14m to the right of the island. On the all-in I decided to try worm over toss potted caster by the island but I couldn’t get a bite. I tried maggot, again with no bites which was a worry, but I couldn’t see much being caught elsewhere.

The lack of action prompted a switch of hook

from a 16 B911 to an 18. I also started tapping in maggot to the left of my original swim next to the island, catching a F1 and then a small perch, but then I couldn’t get another bite.

A brief look over my short maggot line resulted in an F1, before again catching another perch.

Back to the island I decided to use a bigger toss pot of maggot and caught an 8lb ghostie which was a real bonus but I could only catch 1 more F1.

The next couple of hours was spent nicking

the odd fish from various areas of the swim, including down the right-hand bank all on maggot. I did try catching shallow on caster without success before switching to maggot catching only 3 fish, so hardly prolific.

With 90mins remaining I probably had about 25lb, before my 2+2 left margin kicked off where I had a really good run on maggot. I also had a couple of better fish including a 4lb carp from my shallow right margin on a top kit where I fed heavily with caster and maggot with 3 maggots on the hook. I just wished we had another hour.

When I saw the weigh sheet, I was pleasantly surprised to see I had come 4^th on the lake and managed to pick up the section albeit by default.

1.    120-12 – Matt Redman – p35 Extension

2.    109-11 – Leon Seabright – p27 Extension

3.    103-  9 – Cary – p19 Extension

4.      97-  8 – John Laycock – p21 Extension

5.      93-  2 – Tom Scholey – p23 New

6.      90-  3 – Roger Hayton – p19 Club

New Pool

1.    93-  2 - Tom Scholey - p23

2.    85-  9 - Cody Ruston - p44

3.    66-  8 - Dean Richmond - p29

4.  4.    60-  8 - Ken Rayner - p40