Landsend League Round 5, Sunday 9th February

 Another week of wind and rain to precede this match, I don't seem to have any spare time lately as the weather is impacting hard on the railway system and keeping me busy, as diversionary routes and unusual terninating points are now becoming the norm....  anyway, enough of that, onto the fishing.

Today saw the opportunity for me to virtually wrap up the silvers title with a section win, but I needed Nigel Bartlett and Bob Gullick in the section to make it possible.  Part of the scenario was achieved, with Nigel drawing peg 25 and myself 29.  Bob Gullick drew the opposite section, peg 40 and with the rest of his section being inclined to fish for carp, I had my work cut out with two silvers specialists in my section, the Gimp drawing favoured peg 32.

Pegs 28 and 29 had thrown up 1^st and 2^nd silvers on the lake last match, big skimmers caught late on, so there was that positive thought, although with no feature in the peg, I guessed the bonus perch wouldn’t be in evidence.  Four rigs to try and ring the changes, as this side of the lake has been hard in all the matches so far and today proved to be no different.  Two NG Gimps, one with 6” 0.14 hooklength and a 16 63-13 hook, the other with 4” of 0.12 and a 18 Drennan carp maggot. A rig to fish down to the pallet of peg 30, this also covered a flat shelf at the same depth at 15m, about ½ a metre off the island.  Finally a MW F1 slim to fish short, for roach and hopefully any bonus fish, this had a 18 Drennan carp maggot on 0.10.

I intended to start as I had in the other rounds, but given the poor form of the peg I fed the two lines I hoped to catch skimmers from and instead of looking straight over them, I left them and had a quick look to the pallet of 30 and across with a piece of prawn on the hook, but as I expected, there wasn’t enough cover to hold perch. I always feed a short line and it often produces a couple of bonus silvers, first drop into it saw a perch around 6oz in the net, then a roach, which wasn’t far off a pound, quickly followed by a 6oz roach.  This line doesn’t often last long and todays bonus fish were much smaller than the hoped for bream or tench, that often show up. Next bite was a lot more positive and a big carp powered across the lake, I played it for a while and got it back in under the topkit, when another run broke the 0.10 hooklength.  Why in a silvers only match can you pull and tug double figure carp and they come meekly in, or fight through the silvers line!! But still land them on 0.10, yet in a match when they count, the line seems to miraculously derate to 0.05……

After 35 minutes I had a first look over the micros at 11m, which was the deepest part of the peg, first put in with a soft pellet produced a small skimmer, sadly it didn’t open the floodgates and the rest of the match only 3 more small skimmers were forthcoming, this achieved by swapping lines and working hard to try and get a bite. I could see that today wasn’t going to be my day, as the Gimp was catching big perch and the odd decent skimmer and a couple of pegs to my left, Tony Thick landed 3 skimmers that dwarfed mine. I changed  the hooklengths down to 01.0 and the 0.10 went down to  0.08, all to no avail, often this will bring bites from wary fish, this side of the lake seems to contain very few fish this winter, let alone wary ones....

The roach wouldn’t settle and feed anywhere in the peg, so trying to catch a weight of them wasn’t an option, a line fed with groundbait didn’t produce a fish and all the while, I was for the second time on this lake sat opposite Mark Poppleton who was catching well. Trigger was also netting plenty of fish from that side of the lake (pegs 36 and 33 respectively), whilst as has been the story of the series so far, this side seemed to be devoid of carp and very thin on the ground of silvers.

Walking round the lake with the scales, Trigger weighed 89lb, Mark P 88lb and Bob Gullick winning the silvers in that section with 13lb odd.  It didn’t take nearly as long to weigh our side, Nigel on 25 had thrown back his 6 small roach, Tony’s 3 skimmers went 7.08, Beanie had a tench and 3 or 4 better skimmers for 11lb odd, my hard won roach and stunted skimmers went 7.08, the Gimp won the section with 15lb of perch, F1’s and skimmers.

With hindsight, the time I spent trying to get the roach to feed, might have been better spent with double caster or maggot over the skimmer lines and maybe, given how hard the lake has fished, even my meagre, negative feeding was too much, as neither the negatively or positively fed lines really fished at all. It looks as if  my joint third in section silvers might not be enough now, it will all be down to the draw on the last match.

1st 89- 5 - Craig Edmunds - p33
2nd 88- 7 - Mark Poppleton - p36
3rd 69- 0 - Paul Elmes - p42
4th 60-10 - Martin Lenaghan - p58
5th 59-15 - Nick Duckett - p50
6th 39- 0 - Adrian Clarke - p13

 Silvers
1st 17- 0 - Mark Brennan - p17
2nd 15-11 - John Bradford - p32
3rd 14- 3 - Darren Fordham - p70
4th 14- 0 - Tom Mangnall - p7
5th 13-14 - Bob Gullick - p40
6th 11- 7 - Ken Rayner - p15