Not having been to Landsend for a while, I thought it best to get a practice in before the start of the winter league next Sunday. The draw could have been kinder to me, I thought, as I stared at 24 in my hand, but the fish were obviously down that end as 125lb had won from peg 2 the day before.
There was little on offer in the way of fish movement, colouring up or bubbles as the match lake has taken on its winter guise, water clearing, a few leaves and twigs floating around and an occasional tiny silverfish blipping the surface.
I was toying with the idea of cubing up a tin of meat, as the day was mild, but I resisted and stuck with my pre-match plan of pellet, caster and maggot. 4 topkits, a MW F1slim on 0.14 to 0.10 and a 18 6313 to fish caster or soft pellet for skimmers short and off to my left. A pencil float on 0.14 to 0.12 and a 16 6313 to fish soft pellet at 14/16m and another similar with a band on, in case hard pellet worked. Finally a rig to fish down the edge, plumbed up tight to the tree at 14m.
On the all in I fed some caster short and some micros and caster off to my left at about 7m, some micros and dampened 4mm's at 14m, finally a few casters up on the shelf along the edge and pellets at full depth under the tree bough. Starting short on the caster to see if there were any 'mug' fish around, was fairly pointless, one tiny perch to show for it. The 14m line was more productive, far from manic, but for the first couple of hours a few bites, indications and fish in the net for about 48lb.
Nick Duckett on 1 had started down the edge and was doing a fine job of catch and release, I hadn't wanted to go down there too early, but the looks I had down there yielded nothing on pellet or caster and two perch for about 1 1/4lb in total on prawn.
I was fairly confident that things were going OK, as I seemed to be competing well on the lake and expected the peg to get stronger, then just after the 2 hour mark the peg went dead, I tried 16m, I looked over my caster lines, I started a new line at 16m off to my left, I persisted with the edge, all to no avail, I didn't have a bite for over 3 hours (apart from a 1oz perch and a similar sized roach) even on a single maggot. I am sure I didn't over or under feed it, but obviously I can't 100% guarantee that, but there had been signs of fish on the 14m line and these completely stopped.
With 15 minutes to go the the float buried and I had another fish to take my total to 54lb, nowhere on the day, but frustratingly close enough to have been in with a shout had I been able to catch at even half the rate of the first two hours, in that three and a half hour blank spell. Nick on peg 1 managed a few fish in the last hour or so by fishing to the island, as did a couple of others, it seemed that as the day wore on and the water slightly warmed, the fish moved to the shallower water around the island, with 24 not having an island, I was a bored spectator.
No complaints about the weights for the last day of November, a couple of 90's, 70's 60's and 50's and a few double figure nets of silvers, top weight 22lb. So lets hope it doesn't go freezing cold before next Sunday. I didn't get the results, I'm sure they will be on Ken Rayners blog.
1 comment:
They're not!
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