21 booked in today for the Costcutter, so 7 pegs on Cary and 14 on Campbell, I fancied a peg on Campbell, second to draw and John Bradford asked me to pick his peg out, I managed to get him 132, although he did roll his eyes and mutter about "another bloody corner". Dipping back into the tin and I pulled myself 119, the opposite corner, its usually worth a few fish, so I wasn't disappointed. (Not sure why my drawing arm only works on Thursdays....)
I had intended to keep things simple and set up a MW slimpower to fish pellet at depth, this on 0.19 to a 0.17 hooklength with a B960. A shallow rig with the same line and hook, for an up in the water rig,with a J range dibber being the indicator. A MW slim power set up to fish to the rushes on the end bank (to my RH side) and a rig for meat if I needed to try it. As it's so easy nowadays to set up rods with the holdalls to keep them made up, I set up two wagglers, one full depth, one shallow and a straight lead.
On peg 118 I had the musical Bank Manager(retired)and he gave us a good afternoons entertainment, as he managed to break both his No4 sections and at least one topkit, both times the No4 broke he lost the topkit to a fish and luckily managed to get them back - landing one fish in someone else's peg!! I bet you can't guess the make of his pole.....
I decided to feed three lines and started feeding 8mm pellet, 14.5m at 1 o'clock, at 16m down to the end bank and in front of the pallet of peg 120. I had three carp and 1 skimmer in the first hour, all on the 14.5m line, 8mm pellet on the deck.(I decided against feeding anything smaller, as the 8mm was getting nobbled by nuisance silvers).
I had a look across to the pallet of 120 with the shallow waggler and took a couple of fish, before they spooked. I then went to the third line and all I could muster from there was a carp and a skimmer that went about 1½lb between them. I could still see fish moving over by 120, so decided to join the ranks of the lead chuckers and that netted me a couple more fish, fishing tight to the pallet.
The 14.5m line had a steady drip of pellet going in and there was some fizzing, so coming up to the halfway point I went back in over this with the full depth rig and started to catch, putting 6 fish in the net, before switching to the shallow rig and taking another. The fish were gradually coming up and competing, I was optimistic about them coming stronger and catching well in the second half of the match. What I didn't bank on was the 15 minute storm, the wind got up, the rain came down torrentially and the thunder rumbled overhead. That was enough for poor old Jim on 118, he packed up and buggered off (no doubt to order new Maver sections).
The rain eased off and lasted another 10 minutes or so before the sun came back out and the lake surface went flat calm, that was the end of my 14.5m line, not a touch up in the water and one more fish in the last 90 minutes on the full depth rig. Another 4 fish on the lead took my total to 19 and as I had a bit of a mixture from less than 1lb to 8lb, I guessed I had around the ton. Perhaps I should have tried the meat after the storm, but as I hadn't fed any, I left it in the bag and stuck with pellet, not sure if it cost me or not. I did think that paste might go, but didn't set it up, as I was confident that pellet would keep catching until the end, which it did, but slowly after the rain. The scales gave me 1.15 for my two skimmers and 109.02 for the 19 carp, I'd like to think I'd weigh more than that if I could fish the match again.
As the results show, today was the day to draw on Campbell where it was a close fought match, with only a fish or two seperating many weights, top weight on Cary was S.Crowford with 83.05 from peg 86.
1) Gary Ethridge 138.05 peg 111
2) Chris Fox 111.01 peg 119
3) Andy Gard 95.12 peg 115
4) Brian Chilvers 94.02 peg 130
5) John Green 92.04 peg 114
6) Dave White 86.02 peg 128
Silvers
1) John Green 66.09 peg 114
2) Barry Fitchew 48.08 peg 129
3) John Bradford 21.08 peg 132
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