Disappointing turn out today, I just can't understand why people don't support this fishery more, the fishing is good, the owners friendly and hard working and its a continual work in progress, as John tries to improve things.
Anyway, back to the match, peg 23 for me today, with Tony Rixon to my right on peg 20, as last Sunday's Clevedon match had been won from 23, with carp up in the water, that would be my main line of attack, but the flat calm water might mean that wasn't as productive as hoped. I set up a pole rig to fish shallow and a couple of waggler rods, to cover differing depths. A margin rig, although the margins on 23 are very short, now the bushes on the points between the pegs have grown up, it means that you can't get and fish the other side of the point when there is an empty peg. Meat was to be the bait for the margin and pellet up in the water.
As I had time, I also set up a rig to fish soft pellet at 14m, under the loose feed and another to fish meat at 6m - which only produced one bite, so no more of that. Starting on the pole at 14m, it was slow going and it took 15 mins to get the first fish, a decent carp of 8lb. Tony had asked any bites yet, as my elastic came out, seconds later he was into his first fish. I'm not sure whether it was the lack of ripple, but the fish were slow coming on the shallow rig, having 4 in the first hour and 20 mins. During this time I did try a soft pellet at full depth, it got ragged off the hook by small fish, the carp didn't want to be down in the colder water at those depths.
The margin produced a couple of fish on meat, but as I could see Ron Hardiman catching in the margin at 14m, I couldn't get further away than 4m, too close. The wind had now got up and the desired ripple had the opposite effect, killing both mine and Tony's open water shallow lines. I had seen some carp rolling further out, so out with the waggler and that accounted for 4 fish, before the wind strength increased and put the mockers on that.
As I had a hour and a half spell when I caught nothing, I was well behind Tony, Ron and Aaron Britnell who was catching some decent fish. I had expected this to be the first match of the year that I didn't have
any wriggly bait, but I had put a few worms in the bottom of the bait
bag. Whole Dendra over the meat down the margin accounted for 3 more
fish before the margin went quiet again. I potted in some micro's and whole dendras at 14m, first put in, after a short wait, saw a double figure fish netted, then a couple of smaller ones. I then hooked (probably fouled) a big fish that managed to bottom out white hydro and snap the 0.14 hooklength, bugger.
A last look back in the margin and a decent fish hooked, it was determined to get round the point into peg 22 and in applying pressure, it I thought, came off. Looking at the rig the hook was gone, leaving the tale tell curly wurly pig tail of a knot slipped over the spade. How does this happen 5 hours and 59 minutes into a match, on a rig that has landed a few fish, up to 8lb? I am now considering throwing all spade end hook, for use with 0.16 and above, in the bin, as this seems to be something I cannot prevent happening, no matter how carefully I tie the hook. It doesn't happen with 0.14 and below.
So, the crappy hook knot cost me 100lb, as my fish went 96.13, which wasn't enough, that quiet 1½ hour spell, where it seemed as every fish had vacated the peg, proved to be my downfall, as the three that beat me, managed to keep the odd fish coming during this period. So frustrating, but it was nice to get back to actually being able to feed with a catapult and not be weighing up whether to feed 4 or 6 maggots or micros.
1. Aaron Britnell 126.10 peg 10
2. Tony Rixon 123.15 peg 20
3. Ron Hardiman 122.10 peg 17
4. Chris Fox 96.13 peg 23
5. John Thompson 64.00 peg 12
6. Jason Radford 55.08 peg 6
Silvers
Nigel Bartlett 35.08 peg 8
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