Plantation Main Lake

I nearly thought about the poppy match for Sundays outing, but the prospect of drawing 'one of those walks' saw me heading towards a easy walk on Plantation and hopefully a few fish. It was a 21 pegger today and the cafe was open for the draw and I had a coffee whilst chatting to a few faces I haven't see for a while. Bridgwater raider Andy Hembrow was looking worse for wear and muttered something about vast quantities of vodka the previous evening.

I had actually stayed in on a Saturday night to prepare my gear for this match, as soon as I drew, I knew that I would have been better going out for a few beers, peg 33 in the bay, the wagglers and lead rods I'd set up might as well stay in the van along with the pellets, meat & corn.

I did have some worm and caster and a couple of pints of maggot, so I set up two silvers rigs and one rig for the margin, just in case there was a lost carp or two in the bay. The margin only got looked at for 10 minutes and the float remained motionless. I had a MW pellet float to fish worm/double maggot/soft pellet at 11m over groundbait, CW&C. A slim Mosella pattern to fish caster a whatever depth the roach were feeding at and that was it, nice and simple.

I cupped in some GB loaded with CW&C at the start and went over it with ½ a worm, nothing, so a switch to double red maggot saw a few skimmers in the net, until I lost a decent bream. This killed the peg for 20 minutes or so, I refed groundbait, but this time with no worm, just dead maggot, they didn't seem to want the worm. This brought a couple more skimmers, but they wouldn't keep coming with any great regularity.

I switched to the caster line I'd been drip feeding, just topkit to hand and this produced a nice run of roach to 12oz and a couple of perch, one which was 1½lb. Switching between this and the 11m line, I kept fish coming until the end, not exactly one a bung, but a pleasurable day, a nice bonus was a roach at least a 1lb from the 11m line.

I only hooked one carp, a foul hooker at mid water over the 11m line and that snapped the 0.12 hooklength, the decision to fish for silvers was justified, when the scales got to me, the top silvers weight was Kev Perry, 10lb 4oz, he caught skimmers on pellet, my mixed bag went 18lb 14oz and took the silver coin.

1) Andy Hembrow 104.13 peg 7 ( The hangover wasn't too bad then, Andy) Pole/pellet
2) Lewis Jones 80.10 peg 4
3) Rich lovering 80.06 peg 28
4} Rich Healy 59.08 peg 38

Silvers

1) Chris Fox 18.14 peg 33
2) Kev Perry 10.04 peg 25

Oh, I nearly forgot, the pre match entertainment was Mark Walsh testing the water temperature in his peg (39) by falling in, he also lost a couple of trays from his box, full of winders. The peg are in a bit of a state, the pleasure anglers banksticks causing loads of erosion. He didn't see the funny side at the time, but he went home and changed and could at least smile at the banter by the end of the match.