Landsend Winter League Round Two, Sunday 25th January 2015

Working until 10pm the night before this match, as every other day that week, so little time to prepare and probably too tired to be in the right frame of mind, but I was looking forward to it, hoping to get amongst the carp and ensure the series wasn't over already.  To try and get the maximum lie in time I had breakfast at home, nice, but not the same as having some banter in the cafe.

I thought a draw on one of the corners of Match lake would be where I wanted to be, so was pretty pissed off to draw near the middle on peg 5, which hasn't had a lot of form for a while now.  Unbelievably, Nick Duckett was on 11, that four matches in a row I have fished at Landsend and he has been on an end/corner peg and with Trigger on 13 and Adrian Clarke on 1, the section was looking a lost cause.  To cap it all, Rod Wootton had draw peg 5 the day before and advised me that he managed about 2lb, but the peg was full of tiny roach......

I set up 4 rigs, one for fishing down to the empty pallets of peg 6 and peg 4, not so much as a liner on this, on caster, maggot or prawn, so no more about that one. A rig with a 4" .010 hooklength and a 18 hook, to fish if the bites were finicky on soft pellet, two similar rigs with the 6" hooklengths and 18 hooks, just different float bristle colours in case the light got tricky.  The peg plumbed up pretty even depth all over, with a slight drop off at 13m towards the open water.

Rod had said both hard and soft pellet were attacked by the micro roach on Saturday and they were still at it Sunday, unhittable bites on both!!  It took a while to hook my first carp on a soft pellet, it was a good fish, 12-14lb I would estimate, it was almost ready for netting when the rig line broke about 6" above the bulk shot, frustrated isn't the word....

The pellet line became worse for the dinks and dips of the tiny roach nudging the pellet, so a switch to caster towards the end of the island saw a couple of bigger (1-2oz) roach landed, before a switch to maggot brought an F1 and a good ide that must have been not far off 3lb. 2 more F1's before they disappeared, I did manage one more F1 on the pellet line, but that was it for the better silvers.  I had two small carp on the maggot, before sticking it out and catching a few of the plippy roach.

It was pretty disheartening to see the elastic streaming out on peg 1 and peg11, also hearing that Trigger was bagging up on peg 13 and I must admit to being pretty pissed off at the end, even a lake silvers win couldn't lift my disappointment at yet another poor draw putting the mockers on my chances in the series.  The two carp I had went 6.13 - probably a couple of the smallest ones in the lake and the roach, rudd, F1's ide and a solitary perch (they didn't feed) went 11.03 for the silvers pick up.

Looks like my series is over now, although with two silvers wins, I will have to fish for them in the rest of the matches and being on lake 3 next match, that's not an attractive proposition on all but 2 of the pegs.

Having to go to work after the match didn't help, the drive to Worcester is poxy at night as the M5 is a continual line of single lanes and 50mph limits after 10pm.  Still, there's always the delights of Viaduct next week, Campbell, which is likely to be harsh if the promised cold snap comes.

1: Craig Edmunds 115.07 peg 13
2: Adrian Clarke 111.02 peg 1
3: Pete Nurse 94.10 peg 33
3: Nick Duckett 94.10 peg 11
5: Rod Wootton 75.00 peg 32
6: Tony Rixon 60.09 peg 15

Silvers

1: Jason Radford  15.14 peg 70
2: Chris Fox 11.03 peg 5