Part two of the birthday weekend and a trip to Landsend, via
the ever reliable Shipham café, I had held off any excessive celebration, so
was pretty clear headed and ready for the challenge of beating a water where I
have often struggled when targeting carp.
I had toyed with the idea of taking casters and fishing for silvers, but
it was a fairly fleeting thought, soon pushed out of my mind, as the warm
weather should see some carp caught.
I drew peg 25 a corner peg, but it has been the wrong end of
the lake for a while now, but who knows, with this unseasonal weather maybe the fish will have moved around the
lake. I had Tony Rixon on peg 40, the
opposite corner, so a tough ask to beat him, as he knows the venue better than
most. With peg 26 not in, I could,
should I so desire, fish to the island, but as it was 19-20m away, I left the extra
extension in the holdall and set up a shallow rig to fish at 17.5m, which is
hard work.
I also set up a rig to fish meat at 5m (this would also do
for soft pellet as the depths around the peg varied by only 2” or so). A rig to fish banded pellet at 14.5m and a
margin rig, to fish at 13m along the end bank, where the depth was getting on
for 2’, near the maximum depth I like for fishing loose groundbait.
I started on the 14.5m line, hoping to snare some decent
skimmers amongst the carp, but the only bite was from a 3oz specimen, just big
enough to get the 6mm pellet in its mouth.
Tony had managed to mug a cruising fish and was getting some bites by
fishing 17m towards the island, so I braced myself for aching shoulders and
went out there as well. I hooked a
decent fish, it came off , not foul hooked, so no idea why. I then proceeded to lose 4 more fish,
including one that was close to 18lb, I must admit that induced a mild bout of
Tourettes, as it was now over an hour in and I was 5 fish behind Tony, with 5
having shed the hook.
I had been pinging a few pellets along the edge and dropped
the shallow rig in, this produced a few liners and a lost foul hooker, so I
decided to feed a couple of big pots of loose groundbait and try a bunch of
maggots. The fish were there, but I
wasn’t convinced the maggots were a big enough target bait, so swapped to
double worm, this produced a run of fish, before the margin went dead. I had a look on the 5m meat line and this
produced one bite that I missed, that was the only bite from the few times I
tried it, so no more about that.
I had refed the open water at 13m, rather than the original
14.5 and this did start to fizz, I dropped over it with a soft pellet and
managed a skimmer, next drop in I tried a piece of corn, this brought an
instant bite and another near double figure carp. No more bites forthcoming on
corn, but the fizzing was now changing into the circular patches of tell tale carp
bubbles. So I found the paste and rig left over from yesterday and went in with
it, this produced a couple more fish, resting that I went back into the margin,
which I had kept feeding, this also produced fish again and between the two
lines I kept fish coming until the all-out, which just as yesterday, came too
soon.
I had never recovered the 5 fish I was behind Tony, as the
fishless first 90 minutes and another spell in the middle of the match cost me,
but my 123lb was my first ton at Landsend, enough for 2nd on the
lake behind Tony and fourth overall. So
a pick up two days running, two ton weights and the weekend was nicely rounded
off by a couple of beers and a curry at the excellent Blue Ginger.
1: Craig ‘Trigger’ Edmunds 202.14 peg 17
2: Tony Rixon 144.02
peg 40
3: Tim Clark 129.14
peg 17
4: Chris Fox
123.00 peg 25
5: Paul Elmes 114.13 peg 38
6: Steve Seagar 110.05
peg 33
Silvers
1: Nicky Collins 29.05 peg 34
2: Nigel Bartlett 18.02
peg 12
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