First round of the spring league today, 10:30 draw so a leisurely start to the morning, fish 12:00-18:00, so this should see the fish caught late on.
Into the draw bag first today, 22 a bridge peg, not disappointed to be in section B, as that puts me into Section A in the third round, when hopefully it will have warmed up a bit, as another frost and bright sunny day was likely to affect the match today. 22 is one of the bridge pegs and that does give a chance to get a few bites as often the Tench and smaller carp hang around the bridges.
Had a lot of snippets of information about the last couple of matches on here, corn and paste being two of them, not baits I usually rely on, but you can't ignore good info. so Iset up a rig to fish corn down the near shelf towards the pallet of 23. I also set up one to fish paste up on the shelf, I did think it was still a bit cold for the fish to really come up onto the shallow shelves, but just in case....
The other rigs were pretty straight forward, the usual homemade floats I use to fish across, but set for the 'second' shelf and not tight across - one with a spade hook, one with a banded hook. A rig to fish against the bridge just up the slope either side and a rig to fish straight across or to my left again at the bottom of the shelf,
Bait tray was a little more crowded than I'd like, magots, micros, 4mm and 6mm pellets, corn and a very small tub of paste. Started across to the tall grasses adjacent to the bridge on a banded 6mm pellet, was into a fish straight away, a small tench, then had a fish a put in for a short spell, 3 tench and 3 carp, although one of the carp registered in ounces rather than pounds.
As expected after the cold start, this didn't last too long and the match took on a familiar pattern of recent matches, where it was impossible to put runs of fish together, I switched to maggot against the bridge and and had a couple of fish, then went back across and switched the pellet line to maggots, had a couple more, before starting a new line straight across at the bottom of the shelf, I had a three or four carp around the 3lb mark, but it was slow going.
An early look down towards the pallet of 23 did see me get a bite and miss it, then hook and lose a 5lber, before next drop in landing one around 3.5lb. No more bites, rotate round again, nicking an odd fish from the bridge on maggot and then across,
I did see a fish up on the shallowest part of the shelf where I'd fed, so I dropped the paste rig in and it wasn't long before another 3lb fish was netted, but that was the only sign all match of a fish coming into the shallow water.
Ended the match switching between the deeper rig down to 23 corn over micros and maggots to the first stanchion on the bridge. I did manage a double figure fish on the corn rig, but Glenn on 24 had one on paste and he'd had a run of fish across, so I wasn't sure if I'd done enough, also wasn't sure what had come out further up the section.
I thought I had 70lb, I'd clicked 55lb and expected 15lb silver (which I hadn't clicked), that would have been enough to win the section, but I had slightly under clicked having 60.06 of carp and 22.05 of Tench, enough to win the section. In this league thats enough, there is no overall payout, just 1 and 2 in each section, not surprisingly after one match that leaves me third in the league, winning the lowest weight section - deja vu I think.
Given the frost and bright conditions, it fished better than most of us expected, 1475lb being caught at a median of 67lb per angler.
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