I was mentally wishing a decent draw into my hand and can't say I was overjoyed to see peg 60 - even fishery owner Steve Long asked with a wry, ironic smile how I manage to draw so consistently.... Still, whilst I think that there are better pegs in the section, I still needed a section win to get my series back on track. Two more negatives about the peg - firstly its the wrong side of the lake for mugging, too much silver water to see the fish and secondly, for an unsociable sod like me, its on a public footpath and at the point where the path takes anglers round to Match, Middle and Spring lakes, on a nice day there is a fair bit of footfall behind........
Tony had parked the van down by Campbell, so off he went to bring it back up this end, as he had drawn 59, so each others company for the day, I did keep reiterating to him how much better 59 was than 60, although he isn't one to be 'got at' mentally before a match, in all fairness, the margin is probably better than 60, but as I had 61 not in, I was hoping that would work in my favour.
I had Andy Power virtually opposite on 69, not in my section thankfully, as he is a skilled mugger of fish and he had the added advantage of being the right side of the lake. I did wonder if skimmers might play some part in the match for some of us on Lodge today, so I did set up a rig to fish for them with banded pellet, a LWG 20 on 0.12. A similar rig, but with a 0.16 and a 16 LWG in case it got good and the carp moved in. The usual Malman Roob for meat short, a shallow rig, a mugging rig and a margin rig. I decided to leave all the rods in the bag.
I didn't give the usual starting method of meat short, more than 10 minutes, as it didn't work during last weeks festival and it didn't work again today. So out to 14m and a 6mm pellet in the band after feeding some 4's and a bit of corn. No indications on this and by now Andy Power had a couple of fish, mugging with a light waggler. I did have a skimmer on corn, but now Phil Hardwick on 57 on my section had a carp, so I had to catch one.
By the way Andy was fishing, he could see the fish and was picking them off, as previously mentioned, the water was silver for most of my peg and the fish were not visible. But, I had to do something, so out of the bag with a waggler rod and I could finally see a fish just this side of the middle, using meat on the hook to get a slow fall, I managed to hook and land the fish I saw, then not too long after another, when I had my third, I knew I had 3 fish for over 40lb.
It was a long wait between fish, even to see them coming my was difficult, whereas Andy was catching one a chuck, by picking them off. The fish that did venture this side of the lake were very wary, I could see them spooking away as soon as Tony brought his pole within2 or 3m of them.
I did try the RH margin, it was pretty much a non starter, with nothing caught from there, I don't think foot traffic to and from the other lakes was a help, a downside of the sunny weather. I managed pick off 7 fish in the end all on the waggler and weighed 70.02, which was enough for second in the section, typically for me, the lowest weight section and the only one not to have a ton weight. Not surprisingly, a long way off the top weights on the venue, which were awesome, just awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment