Trinity Two Day Festival, Sat & Sun 25th & 26th June 2011

I was looking forward to this festival, because Trinity is a great venue and I was defending my crown of Champion last year. The weather was set to play havoc with the fish again, rain Friday night and a mini heat wave on Sunday, but dealing with the conditions is all a part of fishing.

I gave Andy (Hembrow) a hand to run it this year, although I left the collecting names and pegging up to him, we initially had the 20, we were calling a full house, but by the day before, that had dropped to 16, so the payout was slightly reduced. Its a real shame that the numbers are down, the festival used to be on both lakes (Woodland and Wildmarsh) but now with a smaller entry we had both days on Woodland.

At the draw on Saturday, I waited until everyone else had drawn and took the last swimcard, its not something I usually do and I won't be doing it again!! Peg 2, a corner peg which can produce, but I felt the wind was in the wrong direction and with peg 33 in I had no waggler chuck.

I'd decided to start fishing for skimmers and switch to carp when they came along as they inevitably do, wrecking the skimmer line, with the back up of the RH margin as this often produces carp. I set up a paste rig and a another rig with a 0.8g MW diamond to fish 8mm banded pellet/paste approx 1m infront of the point to my left, a MW diamond (1g) to fish 14m straight out, this was to be the CW&C line and a couple of margin rigs for the RH margin, as it varied in depth too much to get away with one rig.

I fed some groundbait and CW&C at 14m and some pellets in front of the point, starting on the worm, I had a couple of decent skimmers, although I had a couple more in the first hour it was slow going, during the day I had several visits to the paste/pellet line, but did not get so much as a liner there, so no more about that. The RH margin was pretty non-productive as well, 5 carp for 11.11 was the sum total from there. I had tried meat, nicked off the hook by silvers, an 8mm banded - constant 'bobbing' of the float as the bits pecked at it. An 11mm pellet reduced this, but there really seemed to be no feeding carp in the margin.

I finished the match where I started, on the CW&C, I had tried a 6mm expander over this line after introducing a few free offerings, to no avail. I had the pretty much unique experience of not hooking or even fouling a carp in open water on my skimmer line - that said I didn't exactly hook many skimmers. The ones I did hook and land went 15.08 for 3 silvers points and a total of 27.03 for a resounding last in section. That was the defence of the crown gone then... Rod Wootten on peg 4 had absolutely battered me and everyone else, to take top section points and win the match.

Day One Results:

1) Rod Wootten 102.07 peg 4
2) Mark Walsh 85.01 peg 26
3) Lewis Jones 77.07 peg 9
4) Andy Hembrow 73.03 peg 19
5) Shaun Kittridge 57.14 peg 7
6) Brian Slipper 56.11 peg 33

Silvers

1) Rod Wootten 33.00 peg 4
2) Brian Slipper 18.04 peg 33
3) Chris Fox 15.08 peg 2

Sunday dawned a bit foggy over the hills, but the sun soon burnt that off and it became the scorcher promised by the weathermen. As we had four sections, those who fished A & B yesterday, fished C & D today (and obviously, vice versa). I got Misha the fishery Manager to draw my peg, 26. I wasn't disappointed, I'd left all the meat, big pellets etc. at home, as Silvers were the only way I was going to get some cash from this affair, although it was nice when I got a payout from Kev Perry's superpool this morning, a second place, not sure who out of Rod & Brian didn't go in it.

I had brought my Drennan Match Pro quiver, a nice little rod for skimmer fishing and I did wonder if they backed off from the pole line, if I could utilise a small cage feeder with some micros and dead maggot. That was set up with 4lb direct mono reel line and 0.14 powersilk and a 18 808.

I set up the same 1g MW diamond on 0.15 to 0.11 with a 18 63-13 hook, this had an olivette around 12" from the hook, with 2 No8 stotzs 6" from the hook and 2" overdepth. I also set up a paste rig, but didn't use this. I set up a small MW slim power to fish caster shallow on a topkit to hand. Mindful that Mark Walsh had 80lb+ from the margins yesterday I nearly set a margin rig, but didn't.

This peg was around 12" deeper than peg 2 so had to remake a couple of rigs, I also felt that there was no need to go much further than 11m, especially I was going to have a feeder line at 25m. I started on CW&C, but with the addition of dead red maggot and soon stopped putting worm in as this seemed to create initial interest, but then the bites would dry up. After three or four skimmers, the line went quiet, I did try changing my ratio of micros to groundbait but this didn't increase the bites. So I had alook on the topset with the caster rig on, this was 0.11 with a 0.10 hooklength, a fish every put in on caster, but many were 30 or 40 to the pound size.

Time for a look on the feeder, whilst keeping the other lines topped up, especially the caster line, trying to feed of the micro rudd & roach. After three casts the tip plucked and gently pulled round, a classic bream bite, it felt like a bream, a dead weight, with an occasional bump. That was until it got under the rod tip, it then turned into a carp on speed. Three more chucks, resulted in two more carp and one lost, I think they were following the bloody feeder down. The last chuck, was the rod up the bank, I didn't want carp. Back on the caster and head down, the size of the fish increased, if I constantly changed depth, I sometimes had to fish in the middle of the loose feed, some times on the periphery.

With an hour to go, I could see Kev Perry starting to increase his catch rate of skimmers - on paste - back on the skimmer line with double dead maggot and two more skimmers straight away, then disaster. A carp snaffled the maggot and started plodding round the peg, it then decided to run towards peg 27, snapping the No6 elastic. So with 35 minutes to go, do I set up another rig or go back on the caster.

I went back on the caster and the fish not much bigger than the caster they were swallowing, were back, so I quickly grabbed another rig, which promptly tangled, in my haste to get it set up. I discarded that and set another up, but it was 1.5g and it just didn't seem to take the trip the same as the 1g float. So back on the caster, upping the feed for the last 15 minutes.

At the all out I had no idea what weight I had, but I guessed it was low double figures, the roach & rudd were from a couple of drams up to 4oz, with one better roach. The carp went 8.05 and the silvers were 18.14, enough for a section win (silvers), giving, bizarrely, 27.03 exactly the same weight as yesterday. A bit of totting up and it seemed I'd get second place in the silvers (by default as you couldn't win both). A welcome pick up of £100, to go with yesterdays superpool money.

On the Day:

1) Andy Hembrow 124.02 peg 7
2) Rich Lovering 102.10 peg 4
3) Lewis Jones 96.06 peg 28
4) Mark Walsh 84.03 peg 2
5) Rod Wootten 58.04 peg 21
6) Brian Slipper 50.12 peg 17

Silvers

1) Lewis Jones 31.12 peg 28
2) Brian Slipper 27.11 peg 17
3) Kev Perry 26.01 peg 15

Festival Overall:
Place.. Name.. Points.. Weight
1 Rod Wootton 8 160.11
2 Brian Slipper 8 107.07
3 Andy hembrow 7 197.05
4 Lewis Jones 7 173.13
5 Mark Walsh 6 169.08
6 Nick Harvey 6 93.13
7 Darren Vowles 6 84.02
8 Rich Lovering 5 136.00
9 Shaun Kittridge 5 107.12
10 Lance Tucker 4 68.03
11 Craig Tucker 4 53.08
12 Mark Broomsgrove 3 62.04
13 Chris Fox 3 54.06
14 Kev Perry 3 48.08
15 Dave Baker 2 46.03
16 Rich Heatley 2 35.05

Festival Silvers:
Place.. Name.. Points.. Weight
1 Brian Slipper 8 45.15
2 Kev Perry 7 40.13
3 Chris Fox 7 34.06
4 Craig Tucker 7 26.06
5 Andy Hembrow 7 20.13
6 Rod Wootton 5 39.00
7 Lewis Jones 5 36.05
8 Lance Tucker 5 21.03
9 Mark Broomsgrove 5 19.07
10 Rich Lovering 5 12.06
11 Dave Baker 5 8.15
12 Shaun Kittridge 3 13.06
13 Nick Harvey 3 6.13
14 Darren Vowles 3 1.12
15 Mark Walsh 2 4.13
16 Rich Heatley 2 1.01