Landsend Feb 3rd 2013.

So I begin, my 1st blog ever...........

I had booked in to Sunday's match on Landsend Fishery, a venue that I had not set foot on in a dozen years, so with my lack of up to date knowledge or experience of the venue, I was not expecting instant success........Luckily.

A quick read through of various blogs gave me a few ideas, and after chatting to Tom Mangnall and Vince Brown in the week, plans had been roughed out in my head.

Now, whether it is the laid back-ness of my nature or the fact I prepared some of my gear on Saturday, this consisted of 4 whole rigs......which to those who know me, these days that is like hundreds (I have alway hated making rigs.......).
Two rigs were on NG silvers floats, these were a 0.4g with strung number 9's and a 10 dropper and the 2nd with a 0.6 version, bulked 18" from the hook and a single no.10 dropper. Both rigs were 0.12 to 0.10 matchteam line and size 18 Kamasan B511 barbless. The ideas being they would be for 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock at around 11m, they'd also do for swim searching.
The other couple of rigs were on 0.14 to 0.12 to a size 16 Drennan Silverfish pellet hooks. The floats were a 0.2 NG float (of which i forget the name) for up against the island and tight against the margin. And a 0.4 version for the bottom 3rd of the near shelf and far shelf.

Anyways, getting to the venue at 8:30, we were greeted with a slight nip in the air from a short overnight frost, infact one or two puddles had bits of cat-ice on them. The weather was due to be mild enough at 10 degrees and maybe the odd bit of drizzle or shower.
With Mike West, well being Mike West, there was a discussuon on how to peg the match as we had 14, so it ended up being 12 on Match lake and 2 on speci pegs 32 and 33. Payouts were top 5 and 2 silvers......fishing 10:15 to 16:15, thats like an age, 5hrs seems long at times.

Anyway, after a bit of a chat with a few of the guys, who mentioned the saturday match was hard-ish, I stuck my hand into the bucket and drew peg 13, which was, unknown to me, a corner peg, which can be a flyer.
So i grabbed the carp-porter, which incidently I find better and stronger than current match trollies, and bombed off to my peg.
I stuck my box on the platform, which just had enough room for my side tray too. Set up my keepnets, which I was informed was 80lb max in each, only to be told thar no netsto be put in until 10 mins before the all in.........odd rule!!
Either way, out came the pole, baits made up and rigs attached, 2 lighter rigs on middy 8-10, 2 heavier on slack 10-12. Plumbed and re-plumbed.

On the all in I didnt put any bait out as both Tom and Vince said have a go at dropping in around teh swim and hope for a bite. 15 mins later = biteless. So I cupped in a ball of Sonu dark GB at 2 o'clock and half  a cup of damp micros at 10 o'clock, some casters towards the pallet of peg 14 and some mag/caster near the chopped tree on the end bank to my left. Also fired some caster and 4mm hards to the point of the island at 16m.
For hook baits I had red mag, mixed pinkies, couple pints of caster and some horrible 2mm and 4mm expanders......Which I guess I need to practice.

2hrs in, myself and peg 11 had not had a positive bite, I could see and hear a few fish being caught down towards peg 19 and the chap on 15 had caught a couple from the bottom of the far shelf.
Loads of foul hooked fish were the order of the day and I could hear and silvers were hard to come by.
Then at around 12:30 I had a couple of knocks, then a proper bite from my gb line, a small roach came back in, next put out bought nothing. Peg 11 had 2 carp in a short time.(it turned out he had 6 bites all day, 3 carp a skimmer and a roach.) I missed a few bites, trying my lines and all over the unbaited areas, even against the aereator. Suddenly a flurry of activity, a perch about a pound from against the end bank, a 5oz roach from the gb line, a couple roach and rudd from both open water lines and a lost fish and rig, which actually took some laccy - possibly a skimmer or decent perch, before the rig came off the connector....numpty.

That was it for me, I gave it 20 mins more and when peg 15 had carp number 5? and 11 had number 3 I decided to pack up with an hour left. I heard that a couple silvers weights were around 8lb so my approximate bag was 3lb-ish was tipped back to swim another day.

I wandered over to peg 33 on speci and seen my mate Slaps, he'd had maybe 15lb of silvers and a couple carp, Nick Duckett on 32 had not much.

I didnt get all the results, but Slaps won the silvers with 15lb, 2nd silvers was 11lb and overall there was a 76lb and a couple 50's/60lb weights......then not much, it fished hard, the cold frost knocked sport a touch.

Anyways, onto my next match. Hopefully I will find one for next saturday and/or sunday and as it's my birthday I may fish both days.....haha.

Hope you enjoyed, they should become better as time goes by.....

Be Safe
Lee