Tony Rixon's Float Only, Sedges, Sunday 6th August 2017

As I hadn't fished two rounds of this league, I had nothing to fish for except the match win today, its a fishery I don't get to too often, not for any other reason than lack of time and opportunity.  I seem to draw Brick lake much more often than Tile lake and today was no exception, peg 4 being my home.

I didn't consider that I could win the match from this peg, so decided to fish for silvers - I will say I am against paying silvers in leagues, as it can affect the overall result, but I don't make the rules and if I didn't win any silvers money, someone else would.

I set up a waggler, not sure why really, just because I carried it to the peg, the line got wet plumbing up, but that was the only time. 3 topkits out of the bag, a 10 solid to fish worm, maggot, corn on a 0.5g homemade diamond, mounted on 0.15, with a 0.12 hooklength.  A 0.6g NG Gimp to fish banded pellet on the deck and a Malamn Roob to fish meat short, as the skimmers here can be partial to a cube or two of Plumrose.  As I had time, I also set up a paste rig, as they also like paste.

Paul Faiers had drawn a peg that was more likely to throw up some carp, so he donated some nice looking casters to me, I added them to some dead maggot, pellet and corn and fed this at 11m, the 14.5m line received just GB and pellet.  The obligatory short line was where I started, with meat, this was biteless, I switched to the 11m line and double maggot, this was good for two small skimmers, so I switched to corn and this added a third small skimmer to the net after a barren spell. 

An hour down and 3 skimmers for about 9oz in the net, hardly going to plan, out with the worms, a decent handful of chopped worms in with the next ball of GB and this started a run of skimmers on worm, with red worm (again, supplied by Paul) being the best hookbait.  Whe it slowed down, I topped up and caught another straight away, but that was the end of the little run, from then on every bite was hard won and involved some patience in waiting for it.  I did hook a big double figure carp on worm, but after a short tussle, which did lead into a false hope I'd land it on 0.12, it decided to head for the rope down the middle of the lake, the 0.12 could cope with that.

I had a few looks over the 14.5m line with pellet and didn't have a single bite on it, I persevered with the 11m line but it got slower and slower, the short meat line gave me a glimmer of hope with two skimmers in two drop ins, but that was to be it, summed up a tough day.  With just under an hour to go I dumped 1/2  a pot of pellets at 6 sections and it was like introducing Alka Seltzer, this brought two carp and a big skimmer on paste, in the first three put ins, yet again this was a cruel tease, as I had not another indication off this line.

I ended with 26lb skimmers (and a few roach on caster short, which I tried, but the fish were too small and too slow in coming), I thought it would be nowhere near enough to trouble the silvers frame, but with anglers of the quality of Des Shipp struggling, it was enough to sneak into second place, behind Glenn who had 39lb on paste, the match overall was won by Trigger, with 151lb.