I'd decided to run a pole only on Woodland this Good Friday, as I was interested to see how it would fish without pellet wagglers & method feeders being chucked into the middle. When I booked the lake, I didn't expect the weather to play such a part, the water was just over 20°C and the fish were thinking about spawning, not eating.
I got there early to sort out the pegging and had a chat with Rich Coles, we observed a Heron taking Roach and Rich was urging all the Heron population to eat carp instead - a silverfish aficionado if ever there was one.
With 18 on the lake it was just one too many to use every other peg, so give the form of them, 13, 14 & 15 were all in, all the rest were peg one, miss one.
I asked Rod Wootten to draw for me, using his left hand he pulled me peg 11, on the back bank at last!! I had kept it simple and taken hard pellet, paste & meat, although I did find some jelly pellets in the freezer and took them to try and catch a few skimmers. I set up a margin rig to fish meat by the pallet of peg 12, also a paste rig for the margin, as well as a paste rig for the 13m line and a rig for soft pellet at the same distance. Lastly a MW pea for fishing up in the water, surely they'd come up given the temperature.
I fed some softend 4mms at 13m on the all in and dropped a 4mm jelly pellet in on top, it didn't get to the bottom before a 6-8oz hybrid took it.... solid I thought, perhaps I think too much!! That was it nothing else on the soft pellet, nor a hard pellet and paste didn't even register so much as a liner. A switch to the up in the water rig brought a couple of roach to the net on 6mm pellet, before the first carp had the pole hooped over and the elastic streaming out as it dived down.
It was hard going and I had a couple more before deciding to rest the line, a look in the margins produced nothing but a sunken piece of tree, absolutely no indication of fish at all. Back on the shallow rig and a couple more fell to the 6mm hair rigged pellet, but it was slow going. I knew I was way being Rich Coles on peg 4, who was now declaring himself a carp slayer (good job the Heron left them in the lake, eh). I could also see Rod Wootten on peg 15 catching in his LH margin.
A swop to the soft pellet at 13m produced one skimmer and one carp, then nothing, the margins remained apparently devoid of life and I switched from feeding meat to corn, after I found a tin at the bottom of my bait bucket. The lake had now lost all ripple (there never was much) and I tried corn into the margin, I had my only bite in the margin nearly straight away and a small tench was in the net. That was it, not another twitch on the float.
For the last hour I dropped paste back into the 13m line and landed 3 fish, they actually started blowing over the feed, they hadn't done this in the previous 5 hours.
It looked like the corner pegs had produced, the silvers were even more reluctant to feed than the carp and many struggled, although the top overall weights were decent.
My 10 fish went 52.09 with 4.04 of silvers taking my total to 56.13, which wasn't enough to get a sniff of the payout.
1) Rich (Carp Slayer) Coles 128.05 peg 4
2) Stu Holmes 92.12 peg 33
3) Rod Wootten 76.06 peg 15 (Section Win)
4) Mark Walsh 75.01 peg 2 (Section Win)
5) Les Williams 59.14 peg 17
6) Kev Perry 58.11 peg 27
7) Chris Fox 56.13 peg 11
Silvers
1) Rich Lovering 10.07 peg 7
2) Paul Cooper 9.09 peg 19
3) Rod Wootten 8.14 Peg 15
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