As there were two team matches on this weekend, Tony's teams of four and the Commercial House league on the river, there wasn't too much else on. I can't commit to fish any series or leagues, without using up loads of holiday and there was no vacant spots to fill in any of the teams.
So a chance conversation with Paul(Faiers) and I'm booked into one of Darren 'Noddy' Vowles matches, this was to be an exercise to catch as many small carp and silvers from Plantations Carp lake and after the match, transfer them to Horseshoe lake. 'Noddy' had promised us bites a plenty, he'd been down there and they were crawling up the rod....... These small carp are the offspring of the fish put into the lake 3 or 4 years ago, when it was netted and only fish 8lb or bigger were put back in.
To ensure that everyone stuck to the spirit of the match, all fish over 3lb, were counted as 3lb. I drew peg 1 (which was actually permanent peg 2) and had an island I could reach at 16m and a channel which was nearly 5' deep at 7m. I intended to keep it simple and had a couple of pints of dead reds and a pint of wriggly ones. I also mixed up a bit of swim stim groundbait and started with 3 small balls at 7m on the all in.
The first two hours passed pleasntly enough, with carp from 4oz to 1lb or so falling to the double maggot hookbait, presnted under a KC Carpa Chimp on 0.14 and a 18 808 hook. 24 of them in the net with 2 hours gone and then they just switched off. From the pegs I could see and the banter and conversation, I could tell that this was pretty much the case for everyone - although, in all fairness, for some it didn't really ever switch on. I then went out to the island and started catching again, but a lot slower. Scaling down to a 20 63.13 and 0.12 didn't increase the bite ratio, so I just kept plugging away, taking the occasional fish.
The fish I caught from the island, would not take a stationary bait, I had to very slowly drag it up the shelf, this would eventually result in a bite. Andy France on the next peg had taken a couple of better fish down his margin, so with a couple of hours to go, I got out the weed cutter, trimmed the bankside vegetation and fed some 6mm meat and dead reds into the margin.
With an hour to go, Dave Baker had hooked a big fish in his margin, but for some reason was fishing pink hydro and 0.10, there was rather a lot of unkind laughter when he lost it after about 10 minutes... Shortly after I saw a dorsal fin, then a tail over my margin and it wasn't too long before a 14lb or so fish had taken the 8mm meat and was netted.
With half an hour to go I refed some swim stim on the 7m line and took a couple more small carp - all of which were in excellent condidtion and I'm sure, never caught before - the all out was called and I had 41 carp, 2 roach and 4 perch, they went 36.06 enough for first on the day, has the "Holdall of Doom" redeemed its self?
That was 33.06 of small carp and 3lb for the 14lber.
1) Chris Fox 36.06
2) Mike Owens 27.02
3) Andy France 22.14
4) Glen Calvert 21.10
5) Andy Hembrow 19.02
6) Dave Baker 16.10
Not quite the promised 'crawling up the rod' scenario, but I enjoyed it, as I didn't put anything on the hook other than maggot and one cube of meat in the margin.
I nearly forgot, at one stage there was a great deal of splashing and commotion from Andy France's peg, I couldn't see him, but I didn't hink he'd fallen in... It turns out his landing net had ripped as he was lifting a 12lber, the fish went back into the lake, still attached to his rig, now playing it through his landing net. He had another attempt to scoop it out, this time it fell through and broke the line. Luckily, as it only counted a 3lb, it only cost him a new landing net head.
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