With Glenn travelling on his own to this series of matches I gave him some company this week by guesting. I spent a large part of Saturday evening watching the weather forecast wondering how bad ex hurricane Bertha would hit us, but in the end Bertha seemed to give us a wide berth!
Arriving at the fishery the ground was wet but clouds were clearing and winds were light, the latest forecast now suggested sunshine and showers and the wind increasing, they got that right! Getting into the draw queue I thought being on a corner peg would be a good bet, but I think I've had a few of them lately and today I drew peg 10 which is more or less in the middle of the far bank. Neighbours today were Mark Leader and once again Kev Moulton. There was a nice looking tree down to my right although the water was deep, I cleared the bankside vegetation in closer to the bank but I still found 3 1/2ft of water, in fact it was the same depth in the margin everywhere, I really felt I needed shallower. Rigs today were a 4x14 for pellet and the same for meat, only difference being one had a band with 16 PR36 the other a 12 PR478 (did set up a shallow rig but never used). A 4x18 pellet rig and paste rig for 6m finished it off.
I was a little late getting set up and on the all in I was behind my neighbours starting. As I finished feeding Kev had an 8lb carp, as I dropped in my pellet rig at 6m Mark had a carp! I fouled one and as the peg fizzed a lot I decided to drop the paste in, and this was a good move as I hooked 3 carp in 3 drops pulling out of the last one. The wind had now got worse and the lake was towing, causing my paste rig to not sit correct at all and I had to give up on it. Going back in on an 8mm pellet things were slow, with no liners but still some fizzes, I had to put a bit of depth on to try to slow / hold the bait still. After an hour I had just the 2 carp and a small skimmer, not much was being caught other than Paul Elmes opposite who was getting one a bung on paste. Mark next to me was catching roach shallow on pellet and had some real beauties. During the 2nd hour I managed a skimmer and a tench on pellet, the tench snagged me at 5m but when I let everything go slack it swam out.
During the third hour I had 2 skimmers. During the 4th and 5th hour I had sod all and walked up to Rod Wootten on peg 8 who had a decent amount of carp from his margins, Rod had shallow water and could see when the carp were in the swim. My margins had failed to throw up a single bite on either side (other than the odd tiny roach) and I was really hacked off with that. I was never going to win any coin now but was being bloody minded that I was going to catch another carp! In desperation I took my gbait paste and turned it into gbait, I fed this right in tight to the bank next to the pallet (it was still bloody 3 1/2ft deep!) and had to turn my back to the lake to fish this. With 40 mins to go I hooked a carp on this line only for it to get in between my keepnet and a platform leg and snap the hook length. Thirty mins to go and I hooked another which was fouled and came off quickly. 15 mins to go and third time lucky and I landed a good 8lb+ common, end of match.
The day had been a complete right off for me, we only had a couple of showers but the wind was really bad, terrible for the those further down the lake and some sections were broke / lost. Glenn Bailey and Neil Mercer had T shirts on up on peg 2 and 3 though. I've managed to come home with a nice sun burnt face!
My silvers went 9lb+ and my 3 carp 15lb+ for a lowly 24lb 13oz. Rod easily won the section and came 2nd overall with 81lb, and Mark Leader took the section by default with just 27lb, just one of those lost carp would have won me the section, hey ho. On the far bank there were more carp caught in the margins and Glenn also caught some in his margin, it seemed to me the carp fed in less than 2ft of water and those on deep margins really struggled.
Winner on the day was Chris Fox who after a bit of walking got his end bank margin to work and ended with 87lb, see his blog for how exactly. Tom Magnall won the silvers with just 18lb, even they didn't want to feed today! See Tony Rixon's blog for full results, but I know Glenn was 4th and first out the money for the third match on the trott, still he's picking up section money.
Yesterday the division 1 Nation was fished on the River Trent, with 42 teams taking part this year. The top sides dominated, with the order being, Barnsley, Shakespear, Dorking, Starlets. Three teams tied on 5th place, and one of them was Bathampton who took 7th on weight count back, a good result. Thatchers came 9th and they had two anglers in the the frame, Ian Pauley had 15kg of bream, and Mark Harper had nearly 13kilos of roach to come 6th. Sounds like the river fished well in places, good news.
Not sure of my venues for fishing this coming week, though I must say the river is tugging at me to give it a go....
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