Guesting today in this popular league for the MFS team, as the anglers rotate around the sections I knew I would be on match lake or the pegs 1-6 on Spring. This necessitated two lots of prep, as the target fish would be very different sizes, so a few hooklengths tied up for the 'munters of spring' and the trusty old Normark Microlight rigged up with a waggler for a draw on match lake.
Team mate for the day, Ken Rayner travelled down with me and we had a reasonable breakfast at the pub, before getting down to Viaduct and finding out what the draw would be. I was disappointed, but not surprised to draw one of the pegs on match lake without an island chuck, Ken was off to peg 94, with not too much enthusiasim, as it had been last in section in the previous rounds.
Setting up at my peg, I was fairly convinced that the weeks rain followed by a bright sunny day and a frost, albeit a light one would make the margin a non starter, but without an island chuck and limited to how far out I could fish (by peg 45), I had to hope my instincts were wrong. I set up a NG finesse float to fish at 13m, this on 0.14, with a 0.08 hooklength and a 20 hook. Plumbing up it was evident that the bottom was covered in dead, black leaves and other tree debris. I put some maggots and pinkies in sparkling water to get them floating, so the would sit on top of the debris.
For down the edge, I had two rigs, one for dobbing bread, starting about 6" off bottom and another rig for maggot and caster. I did set up a rig with a MW F1 slim, for a line at 6m where the peg was at its deepest - no more about this as it was a non starter. On the all in I fed two jaffa's of groundbait, with a few casters and dead maggots in at 13m and then spent some time dobbing bread down the margin, with not so much as a liner to show for it - I felt my instinct that the carp wouldn't be in the margin, was proven to be correct.
Dropping in over the groundbait, I had the float dotted right down and was rewarded with a couple of bites, they were tiny little dinks of the bristle tip amd resulted in a couple of roach, a skimmer, a carp just over 2lb and a reasonable hybrid. Then the wind got up a bit, this made seeing the float impossible and taking a shot off didn't help, as the bites were such small dinks.
A look down the margin brought a run of perch to maggot, before that went quiet, by now the sun had come round and with the ripple had made seeing anything out in front really difficult, so picking up the waggler rod, I put a bit of line of the bottom and fished double caster, this produced a couple more decent skimmers and a few roach, but no sign of the much needed carp, whilst those with island chucks were taking carp on the lead/feeder.
A late look down the margin with a prawn saw the float bury and a big perch was shaking its head, then it got tangled in some line and a yellow topped waggler popped up, slid down my rig line and neatly disgorged the hook from a 2lb+ perch.......
I was beaten by all but two the pegs with an island chuck, so only 8 points returned from my 15.12, of which 13.00 was silvers, best silvers weight in the section, but meaningless apart from personal satisfaction, that and I beat the pegs either side, so perhaps there just weren't many carp and f1's in this corner of the lake.
See Mike Nicholls blog for full result and weigh sheets.
No comments:
Post a Comment