Pole Only Series Round Four, Acorn, Sunday 4th May 2015

After the total clusterfuck that was my last round in this series, I can't say I was looking forward to it and coming off the back of a bad day at Barston, followed by a day no better at Larford, I was just hoping for a peg which would produce a few bites.

A quick swap over of rigs and ancillary kit this morning and I was ready to set off, all was fine until I reached the A38, when I got stuck in a small queue of traffic, behind some halfwit who obviously thinks the road sign which bears a white circle with a diagonal black stripe, means drive at 34mph........

A reasonable breakfast at the fishery and then down to business, but not before the hilarious and gratifying subject of the gas being relegated to non-league football was broached - 32 years since I heard the glee and hope that City would go bust in 82, it's taken a long time, but revenge is sweet.

The knockout was drawn first, followed by a free draw, as this match is the halfway stage, so some new faces in the sections for the second half of the series.  I waited and took the last ticket in the tub, I wish I hadn't, peg 17, there was in fact two left in the tub as we had one no show, the undrawn peg being 13. probably a better peg than 17.

Looking at the section and the wind ripping up the lake I didn't fancy spending 6 hours dangling baits in inches of water by the island...... unless the float kept going under.  I have stated my intention to be more positive in my approach, this still stands, but I feel that after the 10 hours I have match fished this week, for very few bites, I earned the right to revert to type and fish for silvers.  I did set up two rigs for banded pellet, a MW pear to fish tight across and a MW Pinger to fish pellet at the bottom of the far shelf, if these worked, then the silvers would be forgotten. In case these lines didn't fish I set up a NG Gimp with a wire stem, to fish anywhere from the bottom of the near shelf, to the bottom of the far shelf, an easy one, as the depth, in between never varied from shelf to shelf,  by more than 2inches all the way across.

I gave the MW Pear half an hour against the far shelf without a bite, before switching my thoughts to silvers, just to get a few bites and hopefully a pick up. I fed a line down the middle of the track with some groundbait and maggot and another with a few micro's, the maggot/groundbait line produced nothing except a see through, tiny perch. The pellet line gave me thee bites, one missed and two small skimmers, that remained the sum total of fish from this line for the rest of the day.

A different groundbait mix was hastily made up, a couple of worms chopped, some dead maggots added and this was dropped in across, at the bottom of the far shelf.  A skimmer and a tench were the reward for changing it, but it didn't last.  I had been trickling a few maggots to my right at about topkit + 1 and this produced a burst of skimmers, before a carp gate crashed the party, subsequently, the skimmers had disappeared.  A look round the other lines brought a carp and one more skimmer, with 5 minutes to go, the skimmers showed up again on the short line, with 2 in two chucks, without time to get back in before the all out. 

I had landed 4 accidental carp for just over 18lb and the silvers went 13.06, for the silvers section win and, enough for the silvers match win, so mission accomplished.  I will put up the tables and knockout results in the next few days.

Full Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 95-01-0 peg 7
2. Russ Peck 87-15-0 peg 12
3. Tom Thick 81-15-0 peg 33
4. Brian Slipper 69-08-0 peg 9
5. Mark Broomsgrove 54-14-0 peg 36
6. Kev Perry 53-05-0 peg 10

Top Silvers:

1. Chris Fox 13-06-0 peg 17
2. Charlie Barnes 10-09-0 peg 30