Acorn Thursday Evening Open, Thursday 30th May 2019

Back for another go at this 3 hour match, nothing too technical to write about as I tend to keep it simple with just a couple of rigs and pellets on my tray, although with the way things have been, I did have a few worms as back up.

Into the ping pong bag and out comes 21, not unhappy with it, as I won from it the last time I drew it.  It hasn't had too much form lately but usually holds a few fish, but the match is a tale of two decisions that were erroneous and definitely cost me picking up some coin.

Two rigs, one for across tight into the corner of the bridge, where there is a nice little shelf.  I always go and clear out the far bank line and get rid of loose fronds etc.  Well tonight it looked clear so I didn't bother.  I started off catching well, pinging 6mm feed pellets, a small stamp, but at least there were fish coming to the net, the size gradually increased, but so did the amount of times the trailing vegetation in the water prevented the rig settling or caught it when lifting out.

So, I tried using my neat little weed cutter that I bought from Lee Murphy, but it was a little too much for that, so off the box, onto the bridge and clear the weed.  Not surprisingly the bites tailed of a little - a rooky mistake.

I had been feeding pellets down the edge, RH side and some fish were coming in, but not wanting to take a pellet on the hook, I persevered, but only had one, I finally got off my box and mixed up some Tigerfish GB and put this in, fishing worm over the top.  This saw me catch virtually straight away, but the damage was done, you can't afford to mess about in 3 hour matches, I was one fish off 3rd place and really should have been second, not sure I could have beaten Paul's ton, well done to him. Even though I was out of the money, it was some relief to at least be able to look back on the match and evaluate where I went wrong, unlike some matches recently where I have been at a loss to explain what has been wrong.