Acorn Wednesday 31st March

It seemed such a good idea to book into this match, after last Wednesday's match Tony said " Next weeks match is on Acorn, do you want to come", well it didn't take too much persauding, especially as when I said I was on nights the night before, Tony suggested a 11am draw.

The reality was somewhat different, a freezing cold wind blowing down the lake, as I'd been at work all night I knew we'd had sleet and a very cold night, so perhaps the 100lb+ weights that have won lately wouldn't be on the cards. Metcheck were predicting a wind chill of between -2°C & -5°C, I usually take their forecasts with a pinch of salt, they are more pessimistic than I am!! Not today, it was bloody freezing, at one stage my hands stopped working and when we had the sleet, frozen rain/hail Charlie Barnes was seen scurrying to his van for cover.

The draw saw me on peg 4, its a something and nothing peg, no real margins and a reasonable amount of open water, the RH side has something of a margin but you have to reach over a jutting out spit of bank and over a clump of grass. Plumbing up showed me that the bottom wasn't even, with a slightly deeper area at 10m - too far to struggle in the wind - so I set up a MW slim power, 0.15/0.13 and a 18 808 for maggot or 4mm soft pellet. I also set up a paste rig, which didn't get touched and two margin rigs, one for caster/maggot and one just in case they had a hard pellet.

At the all in, I started at 7m with maggot and fed some nicro on another line to my right, as well as feeding the close margins by hand with caster. I had a few perch, up to 1lb by switching from the 7m line to the LH margin at 4m. The fish weren't exactly climbing up the line, but from my vantage point, I couldn't see anyone emptying it. I had Charlies tackle caddy, Tom Thick virtually opposite, if he had rotated his lines any quicker, he'd have looked like a washing machine on spin speed.

I had an occasional look down what margin there is on the RH side and it wasn't until 15.40 that I had any indication that there were any fish in the vicinity, 3 carp from the line in 40 mins and 2 lost foulers were the sum of that line. By this time I was having trouble hooking casters on, my fingers had virtually siezed up with the cold (give me those clear frosty days anytime, instead of a freezing wind),

2 more carp in the last hour from the 7m line as well as a couple of perch (and an absolutely pristine, never caught before roach about 6oz) saw me through to the eagerly awaited final whistle. I had no idea how it had fished, apart from Tom opposite, Martin Lenaghan to my right on 3 and Jason Radford to my left on peg 6. I thought that Tom might have me beat.

My 26-10 wasn't enough to put any beer tokens in the pot, frustratingly one out of the money and just out of the sivers coin as well, perhaps I should have persisted with the perch.

1) Dean Malin 47.00 peg 15
2) Pete Sivell 45.01 peg 12
3) Ed Wynne 41.10 peg 16
4) P Notton 28.14 peg 10
5) Chris Fox 26.10 peg 4
6) Martin Lenagahn 22.11 peg 3

Silvers

1)Ed Wynne 23.04 (perch and tench)
2) Charlie Barnes 8.04

I'm just thawing out, having watched Arsenal come back from what was seemingly down and out against Bareclona and with the aid of a rather nice Claret!!