First match fishing with the guys from Pawlett Legion Angling Club, with some new faces, whom I will get to know at least their names, some familiar faces and a few from yesteryear.
We had 36 (i think) booked in for todays meet. so Mike let us use 3 lake, Match, Speci and Lake 3.
I arrived at the fishery at 7:40 for an 8am draw, it was a nippy morning, plenty of fog in Bridgwater, but by the time I got to East Huntspill it had cleared (obviously come in on the tide). There was a slight frost in places, so after last time out's struggle, I knew that things were going to be hard. The bright sunshine we were expected to get wouldnt help methinks.
There had also been a match yesterday(16/2), but I am unaware of the results, just got told peeps fed plenty. Nice!!
After a bit of chit chat with a few guys and girls, pumped up someone's flat trolley tyre and lent a couple bags of pellet, which I got given back unused. I queued up, paid my £13 and picked peg 8. Hmmm, not ideal. And when pegs 15 and 60 got picked as golden pegs, I knew where the winner was coming from.
Anyways, the short walk to peg 8 was a little muddy and it turned out I had Paul Purchase on peg 6 and someone on peg 12, nobody inbetween. On Peg 15 (golden peg) was John 'Lucky' Dursley, now from recent match reports, peg 15 was consistantly in the frame. The pressure was on 'Lucky' to do well.
3 rigs for the day: these consisted of a silvers rig (0.12-0.10-size18 silverfish pellet) for 10am and 2 o'clock at 8m or so (Nick Gilbert Silverfish Caner in 0.6g) this was also used for searching the swim it was shotted with well spread no.10's.
One rig for the bottom of the far shelf at around 11.5m in front and for my left and right margins towards empty pallets (NG Decker in 0.6g 0.14-0.12 to 16 B611)
One for 13m towards the tree/bush thing at 1 o'clock (another NG pattern, the HD in 0.4g 0.14-0.12 size 16 B611) or maybe if the margins were not too snaggy.
Baits were simply dampened micro, caster and a few dead and live reds...and some poxy soft expanders in 2 and 4mm, I also mixed a few small balls of dark Sonu groundbait for one silvers line.
With few 'fishy' signs I could hear people expecting a tough match, and so it was to prove.
On the whistle I cupped in a pot of caster down my left margin, 1 soft and 1 hard ball of GB with a few maggots at 10 o'clock, a half a cup of micros with a few sample hookbaits at 2 o'clock and then a bigger helping of micros at 11.5m. The far side was to be baited through the toss pot as I wasn't expecting many fish to be in shallow/cold/shaded areas.
I started fishing across at 13m, feeding small toss pot helpings of micros and caster, well I worked the far bank for half an hour with only a small roach, which dropped off, to show for my efforts.
The guy in 12 had a carp on the tip, he was casting a small bomb all over the peg, I guess to pick up wandering fish. Nobody else on my side had had a bite. Peg 15 had a couple fish, I could not see what they were though.
I soon came back down the middle to my 8m swims, alternating both lines with varying hookbaits, I did think I had a bite, but the float was hard to see at times with the sun, greenery, shade and sky all reflecting off the water. So, no joys here, i re-fed a little bit on each line and decided to try and sit a while at 11.5m as the bottom of the far shelves have been producing reasonably consistantly.
An hour and a half had passed and other than John on 15, only 2 or 3 carp had been caught, not many silvers either. 10 minutes later my float was away, and it kept going, going and going, soon I had a scale back in my hand.
I had to wait another hour for my next bite, this time, again from 11.5m, I had hooked a carp in the mouth, just. After a five minute battle I had the carp on the surface, reached for the landing net and ping the hook pulled out, I could see the hook was literally just on the lips of the fish, lightly hooked is an understatement.
So we forward to 2:30, in the 60 minutes or so since my lost carp I had tried shallowing up and laying on, but bites were hard to come by, I dumped aload of feed down my margins and over my GB line went a few more balls. But I had landed 3 or 4 small roach and a baby perch from my pellet silvers line. But already people on this pond were packing up biteless or fishless at least, on my bank there was only pegs 1, 3 and me on 8 left at 3pm.
I even managed to hook a tree(a few metres up, was checking bait!!) so had to pull for a break.
At 10 past 3 I had another fouler run around my swim for 5 mins before escaping, this occured again a few minutes after, before another lightly hooked carp of 3lb fell off. I was a bit peeved to put it mildly, but still at least there was not any rain.
I had a few more looks over each of the lines without success. Word had come round that speci lake was a struggle with only half a dozen carp in total coming out, lake 3 was more consistant though, with Eric Fouracres, Chris Ware and a couple other guys doing ok I was told.
Fifteen minutes before the all out I began to pack up, tipping back my silvers as they'd be worth bum all.
Back at the car, a lot of other anglers had already headed for home and a few had packed up and were waiting to watch the weigh in. It had been hard pretty much all over.
The results I could get were.
1st) P15 (golden peg) with 34lb on the nose. John Durlsey. Carp, tench and silvers mostly at 6m.
2nd) P42 on lake 3, Eric Fouracre, 25lb 6oz, included 12lb of silvers.
There were a few low 20lb weights, from lake 3. With that lake most consistant. Some decent sized carp and plenty of silvers were taken on maggots, corn and soft pellet.
Speci lake saw a couple double figure weights, nothing special, but a couple were all silvers weights from peg 33 and 36 of 12lb 1oz and 10lb 6oz respectively.
Top silvers on the day was 14lb odd from peg 21, Pete Manning doing well on a difficult day on Match lake.
As it turned out pegs 1 and 3 never weighed aswell(prob had a couple pound between them) meaning that whole bank (Pegs 1 to 12) never weighed in.
All in all, those 2 lost carp didnt cost me anything as they were only 3lb fish and my ounces worth of silvers wouldnt have made a slightest bit of inrodes to the overall outcome.
Still, as I was told, I was not meant to try and win my 1st match with the club!! Still they all seemed a nice bunch of anglers and I am looking forward to 2013 already.
Next up for me looks to be either a trip to the Bristol Avon's Crane stretch (3/3/13), or failing that a first trip for me to Shiplate (17/3/13). Again a new club outing for me, Clevedon FWAC. I hope it is as much fun, with more fish and more friendly peeps.
Next week I am off to the Big One at Farnborough, taking the wife too..............
Take Care and have fun
Woolavy.
No comments:
Post a Comment