Acorn Tuesday Tenner, Tuesday 25th October 2016

Traveled down with Tony Rixon today, I must say I was disappointed that after taking him in, like a child refugee (looks about the same age as some of them....) and feeding him, slaking his thirst with orange juice and my best filter coffee, he then drew the current form peg on the lake (5) and proceeded to empty it.  I had the misfortune to be sat behind on 40 which several years ago would have had anyone drawing it running to it, but it hasn't fared well in recent months.  The Tuesday tenner was thirteen quid today, as it was the usual £12 + a quid poppy tax.

Still, it was a dry day, out in the fresh air and maybe the fish would have moved.  Trying to cover most options I set up 4 topkits, one for right across, to fish in about 15" of water, banded hooklength of 0.12 and a 18LWG on that one.  Next rig was a Chianti, to fish in about 2' 6" 0f water on the second shelf. this had a spade end 118 LWG on 0.12 to start with, my thought was to fish micros, devils spawn and maggot on this line.  A rig for down the track and next to the bridge in the deepest water, again a 18 LWG on 0.12.  Finally a margin rig, I found a flattish area just this side of the empty 39 and by the bridge, both about 3' deep, decided to target this depth to start with.

Starting across on the shelf, I did have a fish after 10 minutes and the story of the day started, no matter what I tried I could not break the cycle of having to move lines, sometimes 2 or 3 times before I got another bite.  To cut a long and fairly monotonous story short, I had two F1's short by the bridge, nothing in the RH margin, one fish down the track and the others either up the shelf or tight to the bridge - the float had to be touching the bridge to get a bite, a real pain as the tow was pushing the float and rig away from the bridge.  I would rotate round the lines, then get a bite out of the blue, what never happened, was getting two bites or fish consecutively from the same line.

I did keep myself amused during one particularly barren spell, by feeding caster and pellets to my new friends...... That was by far and away the most frantic feeding in the vicinity of my peg.

Even more frustratingly, my fish were half the size of those that I could see Tony catching, as well as peg 37 and 6.  One of those days when I leave the peg having tried lots of options, being negative, trying a positive line, persisting with one line, trying pellets and maggots, then left feeling slightly bemused as to what I could have done to challenge the framers.

At least I wasn't the latest victim of the strict net limit at this venue, Mike Owens was the unfortunate transgressor this time, his 71lb in a net costing him 3rd place......