On a Sunday I'd rather have a big match, this seems to be a thing of the past, with many 5 -20 peggers spread over the region. I would have liked to fish the match on Trinity today, but PSV, whilst advertising their matches in the Evening Post, have some complex rules which keep the matches exclusive. (Tony, I could have told you that the carp in Trinity would still come up in the water!! - and that to win money off of peg 18 is like Mike Nicholls buying a round)
I decided to go to Landsend, with the idea that unless I had vermin crawling up the pole, I'd fish for silvers, I love catching those big Perch that are in the Match Lake.
On Saturday, I thought it through and decided to base my match on maggot and caster, a few soft pellets and a couple of pints of hard pellet - just in case, as the weather is still warm. My plan was to fish for silvers at the bottom of the island shelf and to catch carp lets on tight to the island......... That utopian idea, was all well and good, until I drew 24 - no island.
I found a nice flat area, with no leaves or snags showing on the plummet, this was about 11m towards the island (which on this peg, without 23 in, the island is at least 20m away). I also set up a couple of rigs to fish both margins, as well as a light rig to fish caster on the drop.
At the all in I potted some dampened 4mm into the RH margin at 12m (just short of the tree), I also hand fed the LH and RH margin at approx 7m, the concentrated on the 11m line. I fed caster, a few red maggots and some dampened pellet on this line, hoping to plunder a winning bag of silvers.
The plan, turned out to be, a long way from the fishes idea of me netting 30lb of silvers and a bonus 60lb of vermin....
I started on double maggot, in the first hour, I had 2 carp, one about 7lb, one about 3.5lb, they were intruders into 5 or 6lb of crucians, ide roach and perch, more than happy, after the initial hour I was on target for 6 x 15lb, (75) with the though that the peg would get better - wrong, so very wrong, I struggled for bites from any fish, I tried single maggot, double, soft pellet, hard pellet, caster, single, double and triple, and for the remainder of the match, I only had the odd small perch or roach.
I fed new lines, tried worm, maggot, caster, hard and soft pellet all with the same response of a motionless float, the water temperature remained a steady 12°C all day, I had no liners, and when scaled down to single maggot on all lines found small (very small) roach, suggesting that there were no carp feeding in the peg.
In the last hour, I tried all the tricks, chucking bait and water down the edge, trying to fool them I was packing up,I also fished tighter to snags and increased the feed, all to no avail.
I struggle to know what I did wrong, the peg gave up fish early, (not always my favoured option, usually fish that come late, feed until the end !!) and the usual building of the peg, just did not happen. Not a sign of a skimmer, they usually like the soft pellet, but not today, apparently.
Still, it didn't rain and its better than being at work....
The overall result was:
1) N Collier 87.11 peg 6
2) R Shipp 76.12 peg 11
3) N Mout 73.03 peg 32
4) A Oram 57.00 peg 5
Silvers
1) Ken Rayner 26.00 peg 25
2) N Collier 17.01 peg 6
4 comments:
Chris, for what every reason, I have never had much success mixing pellet & caster as feed. Usually has to be 1 or the other at Lands End.
Also I dont feed maggot, unless it is proper cold, because it attract too many blade roach. Today I went through 1.5 pt of caster, mostly via a toss pot, with some atomic cloud
that makes me feel slightly better about my peg but to be fair i have had more than enough fish on to win, probably foulers but due to the depth i think that will always be a problem. as for 24 ed wynne won the silvers off it last week and he caught perch by that little reed bed by 23, and that dont happen very often.
Thanks Ken. I was trying to cover all angles, it seemed to work for an hour, before it all went pear shaped!!
Tony, thats a good weight from 18, foul hookers are always a problem at Trinity, while the fish are still up in the water - virtually impossible to get them all down on the bottom.
I tried by the little reed bed, just the odd roach, the RH margin was equally quiet.
I fished 24 on the Saturday match the day before and it was totally solid - with leaves, blowing from both sides of the lake and into the corner! From around 30 to 40 min's in I spent the next 5 hrs dropping rigs into very small gaps in the leaves, from the tree, to almost the island and across to the other side of 23. In front of me and both margins were totally covered. If I was any lighter I would have walked it! LOL. At the end I tipped back around less than 2 pounds of small silvers including some lovely little Perch.
JohnL
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