Tuesday 17 March 2015

Landsend Winter League, Round 5, Sunday 15th March 2015



Last Tuesday it seemed like spring had arrived, before the temperatures fell again, but I did decide to man up and leave the merino base layer off today and it wasn’t too bad, so the spring, hopefully isn’t too far away.

My turn to draw on Match Lake, leading the silvers table and nowhere to be seen in the overall standings meant I had little choice but to target silvers for the full 6 hours, no matter where I drew.  It was disappointing to see so many empty pegs round the lakes, even though Ken had done his best to get stand-in’s.

I dipped into the plastic bucket marked up Match Lake and on opening the swimcard, saw 3 staring back at me, I wasn’t too disappointed, although I would have preferred  5  – often the home of a few F1’s, maybe 15 or 17 as I’ve seen big skimmers come from there and 11 has won the silvers in amongst a decent weight of carp on the last 3 occasions I’ve been on this lake. It turned out peg 5 wasn’t drawn and for company on peg one, I had Tony Rixon, who would be doing his best to keep the carp to himself.

The water wasn’t as coloured as I’d like for skimmers, but clear enough for the perch to feed, the level is down and I didn’t set up a rig to fish right up the shelf, I thought the water was too clear for it to work.  I did set up a Hillbilly Chump on 0.16, with a 0.10 hooklength and a 18 6313, to fish down the track, this with a standard bulk and two droppers.  I also set up a MW F1 slim wire, with spread N011’s, in case the fish were off bottom, this on 0.14 with the same hook and hooklength as the first rig.

I also set up a rig to fish just at the bottom of the far shelf, this was a NG Gimp (just because it had a yellow tip and was easy to see), again on 0.16, with the 0.10 hooklength and a 18 6313.  Finally, a rig to fish down to the brambles and pallet of peg 2, this didn’t produce a bite, so no more keyboard effort explaining that one. 

The rigs for down the track would be good for two lines, one at 9m at 10 o’clock and also at 2 o’clock at 6m.  The 9m line was fed with a mixture of micros and 4mm’s with just a little fishmeal GB to coat them.  The 6m line was fed by hand with caster.  After feeding these lines I started across at the bottom of the shelf, toss potting caster in and it wasn’t long before I had a bite, a 4oz rudd opening my score.  I carried on tos potting the caster and had a run of rudd and perch up to 8oz, before a couple of slightly better perch were netted.  The bites weren’t savage, so I had the float dotted right down to see them.  I then lost a couple of fish and started missing bites, liners I suspected, although I think one of the lost fish was a decent perch.

I tried dragging the rig up the shelf slightly and this didn’t improve matters, I had tried feeding heavier and less often to keep the fish down on the deck, but this didn’t work either.  I got of my box and set up a rig to fish up the shelf in 18” of water, after losing a big F1, but this only produced 2 bites, one of which was a 1oz rudd.

I had been topping up the pellet line and watching out for signs of fish over it, as they usually give themselves away with the odd bubble, but it appeared devoid of fish after 3 hours.  I managed a couple of big skimmers on the caster line, and by rotating between here and the bottom of the far shelf I kept the odd fish coming. 

Finally with a couple of hours to go, I saw a solitary bubble on the 9m line over the pellet, slipping a 4mm pellet on the hook and dropping it in, saw the float settle and almost immediately bury, a 3lb bream was gratefully netted.  I managed a few more decent skimmers over the last two hours, but once I caught one, occasionally two in two put ins, then I’d have to wait a while for a bite, I think that was just down to the clarity of the water spooking the others when one was hooked.  I only lost one bream, a decent fish that leapt out of the water, heading straight back towards me as I lifted into the bite, he was successful in his endeavour to shed the hook.

For the second Sunday running I could have easily fished on at the all-out, a nice contrast to some of this winter’s matches, that I wouldn’t have minded had the all-out come within a couple of hours of the start.

Ideally I needed a silvers section win to keep my hopes of winning the league alive, as the draw will be crucial next  match on John’s Water.  Stand-in Nigel Bartlett pipped me to it, with a nice net of silvers from peg 11 ( that s three matches in a row I’ve been beaten by that peg….) weighing in at 30.06, my lost fish proved expensive, as the leaping bream would have done it, as I weighed 28.02.  That was enough to keep me one point clear at the top of the silvers table, with a decent weight advantage – just praying for a peg with some silvers in on the last round!!


Next up for me is the Bait Tech Festival at Whiteacres, looking forward to that, trying to get ready but working until 10pm every night this coming week, bound to forget something.......

On the day:
1: Adrian Clark 114.09 peg 13
2: Craig Edmunds 110.01 peg 15
3: Ken Rayner 100.09 peg 20
4: Mike Duckett  100.01 peg 37
5: Tony Rixon 88.02 peg 1
6: Sean Townsend 67.12 peg 7

Silvers
1: Nigel Bartlett 30.06 peg 11
2: Chris Fox 28.02 peg 3
3: Gary Ethridge 17.4 peg 39

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