Saturday 22 May 2021

Maesknoll Summer Open, Acorn, Saturday 22nd May 2021

Second of my summer opens at Acorn, 21 fishing, the only downside is that the weather is cocking a snook at the match titles, with summer seeming some way off......

Nice straight forward draw and I ended up on peg 13, these matches are opens, but with a optional series element running alongside - best 4 of 6 results to count and I'd already nailed on one dropper with the last match!!  I was hopeful that the wind would push the fish into the corner, although I couldn't go to the corner as it was past the pallet of the empty peg 12, I was hoping they'd drop down to 12 for a feed.

As the wind was pretty much straight at me, no issue holding the pole across, so set up two identical rigs, some homemade floats on 0.19, with a 18LWG tied to 0.13, one with a band, one without.  A rig to fish down the far shelf, same lines and strengths, but a carbon stemmed Malman Roob for this, another rig, this time a wire stemmed RW Dink, to fish the near shelf bottom and finally a Hill Billy AK47 to fish up to the pallet of 12, again on 0.19, but a Kaizen 16 on 0.13 for this rig, I like the wider gape for bunches of maggots and meat (although not today, meat banned at Acorn).

Started across tapping in a few 4mm pellets with a 6mm in the band, as seems normal now on this venue, had a couple of indications, a fish, a fouler and then nothing, they just won't settle in that shallower water at the moment, but they don't seem to want to feed in deeper water either....  Switched to micros and soft pellet, had a carrusio and a carp on this, but it was frustrating getting bites (nuisance fish) and the pellet coming off, how much easier is it fishing a banded pellet.... 😀

As 13 has a bit of room, I fed the edge sooner than I would normally, and started fishing maggots at the bottom of the near shelf of to my right at topkit + 1.  The edge was sadly a waste of time, I had one fish from it, the only bite, by far and away the best line was the short line where I kept live maggots going in.  That saw a few carp, decent roach, little tench and a couple of skimmers grace the net, at one time I thought it was getting stronger, but it died off and never came back, giving me a lean last hour or so.

Ended up putting 84.04 on the scales, pipped by 2oz for 3rd, I guess I could have had some more to push Des, but who knows.....


Its a bit meaningless until we have several more rounds, but the league standings are.






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