5 rounds gone, last round today at Landsend, there were 5 of us sitting in second place with one to go, all reliant on Trigger dropping a couple of points to overtake him, once he drew peg 33, it was unlikely.... with 6 framing places, I felt a section win was going to be absolutely essential, given the standard of anglers at the top. I knew my weight disadvantage could cost me, but drawing the lowest weight section is nothing new for me, its been happening since the 70's.....
Peg 45 for me, lake three after a decent breakfast in the fishery cafe, didn't mean too much, I just knew I had to go and fish for the section, so there was no point in spending time trying to catch the small stockies (F1's) or silvers. It was going to be 6 and 8mm pellets, 8mm meat and possibly maggots down the edge.
That meant simple rigs, the lake is shallow, 2' all the way across, so I was distraught at cutting down full length rigs, as they won't do for anywhere else... A slim homemade slim float that takes 2 No8 to fish pellet across to the island, two 4x10 wire stemmed rigs to fish open water, both the same except one with a band, one without. One rig for meat at 5m and a Hillbilly AK47 for down the RH edge.
For those that don't know Landsend, it has a fair amount of arboreal growth and my peg was a bit of a parrot cage, could have been tricky for the waggler, but I didn't have one, so no issue. Started pretty negatively and tosspotted some 6mm pellets tight across and fished a banded 6mm over them. A skimmer a roach and a small F1 was the outcome. It took me 10 minutes to get a carp, I stuck at this for a while but could see Sean and Martin opposite (through the gap in the island) catching short.
My bank seemed to be fishing hard, we had the sun behind us and it was casting a chilly shadow over us and 3/4 of the water between us and the island, I felt the fish wanted to be the other side in the sun. A switch to the catapult to make some noise did bring a couple of fish in, often you can see them feeding across to the island, but they didn't seem too interested, so it was a long wait between bites.
I even tried the RH edge after a couple of hours, as soon as I lowered 5 maggots into the water, it was snaffled by a micro perch, so I changed it to GB and corn, that just saw roach nibbling at the corn, so I started feeding 8mm pellets as well, trying to put them off. I did have one carp on corn in the edge and thought that might be the margin coming to life, but he was a lonesome soul.
The meat line was a non-starter, it was just too cold this side of the lake, so I persevered across where there was some sun on the water, I just kept nicking an odd fish on 6mm pellet, going into the last 15 minutes, I'd trashed my across rig on a bramble, I felt I needed another fish, so I sat it out down the edge and was rewarded with one more carp, the biggest of the day at about 8lb.
I ended up weighing the lake, the far side certainly had fished better than my side, but that didn't matter, as I got the much needed section win (and I'm not bitter, but yet again the lowest weight section in the match..... can't see my luck at the draw bag ever changing).
So, back for the results and the final standing only slightly changed from the pre-match table, Rod missing out, but all the rest of us in second place taking max points, as did Trigger who not surprisingly won the match. My low total weight knocked me down to 5th place, so a few quid and the section money to take home. It's hard to be disappointed to come 2nd in a notoriously tricky league, so I might wait until the next time I draw the worst section to post all my kit for sale.....
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