Two lakes in, Tile and Brick, I usually find myself on Brick, but not today, peg 38 was to be my home, sandwiched by the match organiser Tony on 37 and Steve Evans Tony's admin clerk for the series on 39. Favoured corner peg 40 was drawn by Neil Mercer, who does seem to have a golden arm, winning last weeks Todber round from a corner peg - that said, you still have to catch them and with the pressure on.
I had come with options to fish for carp or silvers, I did fancy a day on the waggler, so set up a shallow and depth waggler, a 4g floats would get to the island which looked inviting. Next up the topkits, a paste rig as this has been as and far as I am aware a successful method on this lake, a rig to fish banded pellet on the deck, this was plumbed up at 13m - as far as I was going, my back is still painful. A homemade diamond 0.5g float next onto a topkit, this was matched with a 18 Kaizen hook to 0.14, this was plumbed up at 6 joints. A similar rig, but on 0.20 (rather than the 0.16 of the previous rig), just in case the carp action got hectic.
I also set up a light rig with strung out No11's, again with a 0.14 hooklength, this was plumbed up short, so it was well up the slope and it would also double as a 'deep shallow' rig in open water. Bait tray was simple, Burts feed pellets in 4mm and 6mm, some 7mm meat, Burts F1 soft hookers, 8mm feed pellets and some 6mm Polony pellets. I also had a bag of paste, made from soaked feed pellets.
On the all in, I started on the waggler (shallow) and fed 8mm pellets to the island, straight away it was obvious the wind was going to cause havoc and it only lasted 10 minutes before it went up the bank and that's where it stayed. I fed some dampened 4mm's at 6 joints and went over that with a soft pellet, small skimmer first drop in, 10lb carp the next, so a decent start, but I had by then decided that my best way of picking up was to fish for silvers.
I stuck out the line at 6 joints, the catch rate varied, it was never manic, I came off the bottom by about 6"and caught some skimmers by doing that. After about 3 hours it had slowed a lot and the fish had got smaller, slipping a bit of meat on the hook I waited to see if that would increase the size of the fish - it didn't, I didn't have a bite on it. I got off my box and mixed a little GB (Burts Expander and Burts Chocolate Orange) and opened a tin of corn, I fed a ball of GB with orn and 4mm pellet in, put corn on the hook and dropped in, 2 decent skimmers in two chucks, both on corn - sussed it!!…… or not, that was the only two bites I had on corn.
The last half of the match was spent swapping and changing between the 6 joints line and meat up the near shelf, this brought 3 more carp and a few decent skimmers, it was no good leaving the rig still, the meat had to be either dropping through the water or not on the bottom longer than 20 seconds, once it was it had to be lifted out and flicked back in again.
Enjoyable day, my thoughts that I wouldn't beat Neil and then Tony when he started catching shallow/long (too far for me to hold) so my decision to fish for silvers was vindicated as I weighed 44.02 of skimmers for a silvers win.
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