I couldn't fish this series this year, which was a shame as I have had a 3rd and 2nd overall in the previous years, so was pleased to stand-in today for someone (no idea who). It's a nice easy day tackle wise topkits and 3 sections of pole.
Bait wise I had pellet, paste hemp and maggots, with a smattering of corn and some worms. I drew peg 8, wasn't too chuffed, but then found out that 7 and 9 weren't drawn and that cheered me up a bit, although Misha had pulled Tony Rixon another decent peg and he would be on the ample platform of peg 6. Enough room for Judith to put her sunbed out, although he sun didn't grace us with its presence for too long today.
I did expect to catch straight from the off on paste, either 1, 2 or 3 fish so that was the first rig out of the box, then two similar rgs to fish either soft pellet, corn, maggot, worm etc on the hook and a rig to fish pellet in a band. I had to set up two edge rigs as the edges were 12" different in depths.
On the all-in I started as planned on paste and had a fish first put in, 5lb in the net, next drop in a chunky 10lb common and that was, as predicted, the end of the fish on paste, quite why this has happened on this lake I don't know, but the lake has changed and evolved ever since the high bank was removed.
The next 5 hours were a real struggle, I found a bit of meat and set up a deep/shallow rig set about 2' off the bottom, this works a treat at Whiteacres on Match lake, but was totally unproductive today. Tony had a couple on his shallow rig, so off the box again and a shallow rig set up. Much thrashing of the water later I had managed on solitary carp.
The only chance I had was for the edge to come good, the nice little undercut and shallow water to my left looked ideal, but one 6oz rudd was the sole fish from there, RH side was better and I had several good fish 9-12lb, frustratingly two double figure commons found a snag and both snagged up solid, this wasn't far from the baited area, so as well as seeing 20lb+ lost, it disturbed the peg and cost me time whilst I refed it and it settled.
The two lost fish definitely cost me third and maybe even second, as I weighed 69lb odd, Tony was 3rd with 80.11 and Clayton was 2nd with 89.03, so I had to settle for a default section pickup and rue the lost fish. Well done to Mike West who was the only one to break the ton. Full results on Tony's website.
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