09/08/26 - Rood Ashton

Weight - 7lb 5oz

Catch - 52 Roach, 51 Carp

Weather - Hot & sunny

Match - Tackle Den (16 fished) - 2nd in section, 12th overall

It was a nice short drive to Rood Ashton with Tackle Den and on arrival I could see the lake was down about a foot, which meant some pegs would be very shallow.

At the draw, everyone wanted pegs 18 to 21, as that was where the fish had been showing. With that area likely to dominate, Steve decided to pay out the winners of four sections only.

I drew p2 which was about as far from the fish as I could be. I was then told that my peg in recent matches had produced no more than 25lb, so my enthusiasm was in short supply while setting up.

On the all-in, I started on the method to the island, but I could feel the feeder plugging in the silt. Needless to say, I had no bites. I also tried the straight lead at 25m, where I had been pinging 8s, but that didn’t produce either.

After an hour, Pete on p1 had one carp, Vince on p3 had a couple of small fish, and Simon on p4 had yet to catch.

So, I decided to try catching some roach. Before leaving the house, I had grabbed a bag of dead maggots from the freezer, although live maggots would have been better.

By feeding small balls of groundbait (Coco Squid : Crushed Expander) with dead maggots at 4m, I started catching baby carp among the roach. A whip would probably have been better, but at least I was catching and I hoped for a few carp in the final two hours.

With two hours remaining, Pete netted his third carp and Simon caught his only carp, so it was time for me to try for one myself.

I had kept pinging pellets over the 25m line, but I never had a bite.

I also started feeding 4mm pellet down my left margin. Fishing an 8mm pellet over the top brought no response, so I big-potted micros and 4s and tried paste, but this only encouraged the small fish. Any decent fish in the area would have pushed them out of the swim. So I switched back to 8mm pellet catching one baby carp, and then, 20 minutes from the end, some elastic came out of the pole — but the fish was only about 1lb.

Pete won our section by catching against the end bank and next to the reeds. So well done to him. Surprisingly, I came 2nd in section, with Vince weighing 3lb and Simon 5lb.

Fair to say, the lake did not fish well, with only one weight over 100lb and my part of the lake fished the worst.

1.    107-  9 – Shaun Hodges – p21

2.      56-  5 – Pete Philips – p1

3.      49-12 – Darren Hibbert – p20

4.      46-  8 – Andy Burns – p5

5.      43-  5 – Andy Bartlett – p19