Teams of Four, Landsend, 6th November 2011

Why write a blog? I suppose I started it and found it helped my thought process in assessing what I did right and wrong in a match, some kind folk passed comment that they enjoyed reading it so it made it worthwhile. I seem to have got in a bit of a rut lately, struggling to put together any sort of decent results, so how can that be made into thought provoking (for me) and entertaining (for the reader) reading? I'm not sure but I'll try, as I'm a determind bloke and am keen to get some modicum of success back into my results.

Landsend really is my bête noire, I just cannot seem to compete on this venue when fishing for carp and seem to always draw the wrong lake for silvers. This match was no exception, guesting for Westerleigh, I was keen to do well for myself and the team, peg 68 on John's Water (Lake 3) was a decent draw, yet I failed dismally again, to give a decent account of myself, coming last but one on the lake. Some consolation, Steve Kedge beat me on the next peg, but only by virtue of two foul hooked carp. I also topped the silvers on the lake with 9.03, but as expected Match & Speci lakes took the top silvers weights. It seemed that all the pegs adjacent to the aereator struggled, had it dispersed cold water around that end of the lake pushing the carp towards the other end?

I tried to keep it simple, a MW slim power on 0.16 with a 18B960 for 6mm pellet tight across to the island, two open water rigs, a Sensas Auchy pencil and a Carpa Chimp, with 0.14 and 0.10 hooklengths and a rig to fish the near margin, under the little tree to my left. The pellet approach produced nothing, not even a liner, so no more mention of that. Swapping between the open water rigs, brought me some hand sized skimmers and hybrids on maggot, I couldn't get a bite on caster or pieces of worm, I lost one foul hooked carp after 20 minutes on the 13m line (towards the aereator), but apart from that there was little sign of carp in the area until the last hour or so.

Bela Bakos was on 41 opposite and had resorted to fishing shallow in the open water, as one or two cap had swirled across by him in the last hour or so, I tried the same and did foul hook one that I flicked the float towards after it had swirled on the top, it went 5lb exactly to give me a dismal 14.03 total.

So, not sure what to do about Landsend, give up on it? - but thats not my style, or persevere and try and work out why and where I'm going wrong, not sure I'll be putting in a concerted effort, but I guess I'll be back.

For the results, see Tony's blog.