A chance to visit TBF for the first time, in a match to raise funds for the England Disabled and Ladies teams, with a lot of banter thrown in, an ideal distraction from my recent poor run of results.
Traveling up with Tony Rixon, we debated where to stop for breakfast and opted to try the new services at Gloucester on the M5, you expect to pay a bit more in the services, but it wasn't too pricey and the food was decent as well.
The lakes at TBF looked a bit snakey to me, surely not a day of dangling pellets by islands..... not my idea of fun. but no, thankfully Des gave those of us who made the trip up from the Bristol area, a run down on the place. The main talk was of fishing worm and caster, but after talking to Tony, we decided that taking on Des and any other regulars up there, on that method was a recipe for failure. I had live maggots and dead maggots, pellets and meat as the mainstay of my bait tray.
I drew Canal 4, meant nothing to me, Tony drew 10 on New lake which made it easy for parking, as the pegs aren't too far apart, we showed Des the peg numbers and he told Tony, "thats a flyer", he gave me a commiserative smile and said "that's OK"........
Canal was pegged two miss one, so I had an empty peg to my left, not knowing too much about F1's I wasn't sure if this was an area they would back off into or not. Plumbing up I found a deeper channel running from the pallet to the far side and it shelved up to the left and right all the way across. This would mean constant depth changes to start new lines up to keep in touch with the fish.
No point confusing myself, so just 4 topkits, a shallow rig, two depth rigs, one for topkit +1 and one for down the middle, also a rig to fish tight to the far bank, this was set up with a 18 on 0.12 and a bait spike, to fish meat - yep, I have been reading Andy Power's article in this months Match Fishing mag.....
Starting on the meat across, I had a missed bite first drop in, next drop in saw a small carp netted, then the line died, this was to become a familiar theme throughout the match. I had been feeding tiny balls of GB and maggot on the topkit+1 line and this produced two F1's and then started fizzing, next couple of fish were skimmers, 12oz, so reasonable weight builders if they would keep coming, but the size got smaller and smaller, until they were just a nuisance.
The upshot of the day was that I had to keep moving to a new line and take maybe one F1 from it, before the skimmers moved in, I had been feeding maggots down the middle and saw a couple of swirls, so in with the shallow rig, 3 fish and then a skimmer. I could go back to the far bank and get 1 carp about every half an hour, but they were small.
It seemed that the fish were backing off the feed, the guy on peg 5 found exactly the same thing, he started catching faster than me (on soft pellet over micro), when the bites dried up he fed more and that just made it worse, I think by just dripping a few maggots in I managed to work my way round the peg and keep the odd fish coming. I weighed 70lb, which was second on my side of the lake, beaten by end peg 11 who had 74lb. Tony was second in his section with a shade over a ton and as the weigh-in took a long time we got on the road. Thankfully Bobby G stayed on for the raffle and results and he is bringing an envelope home for myself and Tony, I am assuming they paid two in a section.
It was hard work, but quite enjoyable and I can see myself having a few trips to F1 venues once the winter arrives.
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