Landsend Loyalty Match,Sunday 11th January 2015

The luxury of being a passenger today, although that does involve paying for a breakfast that can satisfy Mr Rixon.  The café was on top form and to a man everyone said how good the breakfast was.  

Onto the fishery, where only a fairly disappointing 14 turned up, although a clash with other matches prevented some from coming, there is talk of match angling being in decline, but if all the anglers spread around the commercials within a 30 mile or so radius fished one match, it would be as big, if not bigger than the matches of yesteryear.

The loyalty aspect meant that those of us who had fished the venue 15 times and paid £1 each time for the privilege, could fish this match for the enhanced payout, it was decided to put 7 on each lake, lots of room, which, IMO, is not always the best situation, as it gives fish plenty of space to back off into.

Into the tin and out comes peg 7, I think this side of the island can suffer a bit in the winter, as it gets no sun, but the margins do, whereas it’s the exact opposite on the other bank. The water level is still at least 12”-15” down, so the island shelf becomes less of a likely place to catch.  Four topkits set up today, I did bring a lead rod, just in case the wind made pole fishing to difficult, but it stayed in the tube, as the wind was very light, even becalmed at times. The rigs comprised three kits with white hydro in and one with a well used and softened Vespe green hollow.

 A wire stemmed MW float whose name eludes me, for up on the shelf, I had one roach bite on that and it fell off half way back in, so no more about this.  A NG Gimp for across at the bottom of the far shelf, this had 0.12 and a 16 6313 for double caster, a Hillbilly Chump with 0.10 and an 18 6313 for fishing down the track, this would do for maggot or 4mm expander.  The Vespe green had a margin rig on 0.20 with a 0.16 hooklength on and a 16 Guru XS, this would do for down to the pallet of 6 and up to the pallet of 8.

Keeping it simple, I started by dobbing double white maggot along the shelf, to no avail, I would like Mike to allow bread in matches, I’m sure it would work.  I fed the line I was fishing down the track with a few micro’s and across to the bottom of the far shelf with caster via a catapult.  Following on from last weeks debacle, I wanted to be a bit more positive, but not completely kill the peg.

The micro fed line produced nothing, not any sort of indication on the float that there were any fish in the swim.  A switch to the caster line across saw some 6-8oz perch netted and some roach, but nothing fast and furious, a carp finally took a liking to the caster although it was a small one at around 3.5lb.   Looking back over the pellet line was as non productive as the first look, until a switch to single maggot, brought another carp and a roach.  By now I had the feeling that the best chance of a pick up was to keep fishing  for all species and hope to get some better silvers.

That was when the phone rang and I guessed something was wrong, as Caroline never rings during a match, she was upset, she’d been out walking with Louis (one of our dogs) and he’d been attacked by an American Bulldog, she ended up on the floor pulling the dog off and Louis had a large hole in his neck.  A vet trip later and he was OK, but she was very shaken up, that somewhat dampened my enthusiasm for carrying on. 

 I did get back to it and managed a tench and a big perch from the margin, down under the pallet of 6, also a 10lb carp.  I couldn’t see everyone, so as I hadn’t managed a single skimmer, I was unsure if my low double figure of silvers would be enough to sneak some coin.

As it transpired, I weighed 35.05, of which 11.05 were silvers, Nick Duckett managed second on the lake and top silvers, so I scraped a payout by default, which was better than nothing.

1: Steve Seager 98.14 peg 32

2: Craig Edmunds 86.09 peg 24

3: Mike Duckett 52.13 peg 33

4: Nick Duckett 51.12 peg 11

5: Andy Hembrow 49.07 peg 16

6: Kev Molton 46.06 peg 13

Silvers: Nick Duckett 15.00