All three lakes in for this match, with 20 pegs on the main lake and 10 each on Hawthorn and Westpool. I fancied a draw on the main lake, Tony Rixon offered to draw for me, but I took my own ticket and ended up on Hawthorn peg 1. I have only drawn this lake once before and that was peg 2 in winter, I won the lake that day with 50ish lb. I wasn’t so confident today, even though the peg has a pipe with water running into the lake, providing some aeration, as the wind was blowing down the lake away from my peg. Also whilst its an end peg, you cannot get to the end bank and with no real margin to speak of (due to rushes) it at least concentrates your mind on the option available.
I set up 5 rigs, a paste rig which would do for anywhere except tight over, as the depth only varied about 6”. A MW slim to fish banded pellet across, a MW pea just in case there were any cruisers , a rig to fish meat at 4m off to my right and a rig for maggot down the track.
Bait tray was simple, 6mm pellets, 8mm pellets, meat and maggots. The paste was left in the bag for now. The peg had shown some signs of life when I arrived, with a few bubbles coming up, these had completely gone 15 minutes before the all in and the signs of fish were few and far between. Shortly before the all-in was called, that most frugal of anglers, Mike Nicholls came over with an enquiry, “did I have any groundbait he could have – oh and a bowl to mix it in” I had brought a bag of mixed gimps gold/Sensas lake, but didn’t intend to use it on this lake, so off he went with it and the bowl – before the end, he brought the remnants of it back, proclaiming it jinxed…….
I fed some 6mm pellet over at the start and meat at 4m, before starting on maggot down the track, this was painfully slow and after 20 minutes without a bite, I switched to the pellet across, this was equally as non-productive. A bad start!! Back down the track with maggot saw a skimmer and a roach, which made up my sum total of silvers, weighed as a very generous 8oz. The rest of the match saw me rotating between the meat line, a paste line just up the far slope, a close paste line ( not even a bite) and the pellet tight to the far bank grasses.
This produced an occasional fish, but it was hard going. The far bank has a lot of overhanging grass, this makes it impossible to get tight to the bank. I saw Leon Hubbard on peg 3 take a short run of fish from the far bank and as peg 2 was empty I got the 16m section out of my rod bag and went to the bare bank on the far side of peg 2 This produced four fish in four put ins and then that died as well (same as Leon’s peg). The remainder of the match saw me take two more on meat and wasn’t disappointed when the final whistle went. 11 carp for 25.04 and my ‘bonus’ silvers saw me weigh 25.12, 6lb of silvers would have seen me take second in section, but as it was I was a resounding last in section. It was a pretty even section, apart from Paul Elmes who nearly quadrupled everyone else’s weight. His 108lb being section winner with the other 4 weighing between 25.12 and 32.09. See Mike Nicholls blog for actual section weigh sheets.
This hot weather seems to have the fish either cruising round not feeding, or shoaled up like winter fish and not moving from where they are happy.
1) Tom Mangnall, 140.08 peg 6 on West Pool
2) Paul Elmes, 108.4 on peg 6 Hawthorn
3) Adrian Jeffery 103.04on 9 Hawthorn
4) Craig Edmunds 94.4 peg 11 Main Lake
5) Dean Malin 77.14 peg 4 Main Lake
6th Bela Bakos 69.5 peg 15 Main Lake
Silvers
Joe McMahon, with 19.7 on peg 8 Main Lake
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