Plantation Silvers Open, Thursday 14th February 2019

Third of these matches, unlikely I can make anymore due to work, so had to try and make the most of this opportunity.  Match limited to 16 today, as the lake is a bit of a bugger to peg out, as so many of the pegs interfere with each other.

My dip into the draw tub saw me on peg 3, which is permanent peg 4.  I wasn't disappointed, as it should be good for skimmers and roach.  Three top kits set up, a double bulk rig, a standard bulk and droppers - both these on 0.14 rig line, with 0.10 hooklengths and Guru F1 hooks.  The final rig was a HillBilly Frostie, again on 0.14, this time with a 0.09 hooklength and a 18 Gama Green hook, with strung out shotting.

I did set up a waggler, first time trying the Preston sinking feeder line (3lb) as a waggler line, just looking for a line that sinks quickly, no other reason for trying it.

I plumbed up and settled on 3 lines, two at 14m, 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock and a short line at about 7m.  The 7m line was loose fed with caster, the 10 o'clock 14m line with GB and caster, the 2 o'clock line with micros and a couple of 4mm pellets.  Apart from one tiny roach on 4mm soft pellet, the first half hour was devoid of bites, I finally started to get a couple of small skimmers on the light strung out rig.  The smaller fish had obviously come over the GB, but were sitting off bottom, I tried the double bulk rig and had 4 or 5 skimmers between 6 and 10ozs straight away, that sadly was the end of the easy fishing.

For the rest of the match, I had to keep working the bait and came off bottom to catch a few more, but sadly no quality, wasn't sure what I had in the end, but the scales gave me 19.01, which was not enough to trouble the framers, walking round the lake and looking at the weigh-in, I could see the lack of quality had cost me. It was a nice close match and one where half the field could have, with a couple of better fish or a another run of fish, won it, I enjoy matches like this.