With the team in no position to pick up anything, there was just pride to salvage and make sure we weren't last, that gave everyone a chance to fish positively to win some coin, with any luck.
The breakfast at the pub was OK again, so with that and a few conversations done, it was down to the fishery car park to get a parking place, whilst Paul Faiers took his turn at plucking the numbers from the tin. I had commented on Fred Roberts facebook page that Paul would draw him a flyer, but not sure about the rest of us and Mystic Maesknoll was proven correct.
Glenn found himself on unfavoured 113, Mike Walker on 79, Fred on 73 (two match wins to its credit in the series), myself on 43 and Paul had plonked himself on 5 - an island chuck where sitting on your hands is a requisite, so sadly the wrong man on that peg, as I knew the lure of some silvers on the pole would distract him.
I wasn't disappointed to draw on Match Lake, as in all the previous rounds our team has drawn on the Spring/Middle pegs of this split section, but I would have preferred 41 or 42 to my home for the day 43. A good look and think about the peg when I got to it, the wind looked awkward for the waggler, but there was a chance it could drop or switch round, so I set up a straight Drake peacock with a hollow plastic bristle, this would easily cover all of the water in the peg and the hollow bristle giving visibility in the difficult light conditions. 3lb reel line, with a 0.10 hooklength and a 18 6313 completed this set up, with just 2 No 10 down the line.
Two lead rods out of the bag, both 10' Tournament Pro, one with a straight lead and one for a small cage feeder, the straight lead on 6lb Daiwa TDR reel line, the feeder on 10lb Maver Jurassic (not needed that heavy, but had nothing lighter). 0.16 hooklength and a 16 QM1 on the lead and 0.14 with a 16 LWG on the feeder.
Topkits were selected, white Avalon elastic for a margin rig, which should cover F1's, Carp and Perch, this was 0.16 straight though to a 18 Guru Super Spade.
No5 doubled up and a Hillbilly Chump, with a standard bulk and two droppers, this rig did not get used, so no more about it.
Yellow Middy with a .2 NG Gimp, 0.10 hooklength and a 18 6313, this was a 4" hooklength and double bulk rig for the skimmers that inhabit this lake.
A light rig for F1's in case they were up in the water, feeding on the drop, Middy 6-8 orange elastic and MW F1 Slim wire, with a strung bulk of No11's, this rigs saw little use......
On the all in I cupped in 4 Jaffa's of groundbait at 12.5m, leaving it to settle I tried popped up bread to the island on the straight lead, not so much as a liner from this, so I tried maggot and meat, all to no avail. looking round there wasn't much being caught and mindful of it being a 5 hour match, I picked up the pole and dropped the double bulk rig in over the groundbait. Indications straight away and 4 fish hooked, 4 lost, 3 small fish and a decent skimmer, so up the bank with the Middy yellow elastic and another topkit with the orange 6-8 in attached to the rig.
This was an improvement and the first of a run of skimmers came to the net, oddly the double bulk rig was not giving the expected lift bites, but just tiny knocks, which resulted in a missed bite if struck at, the first 2 or 3 knocks had to be ignored and only strike when the float disappeared. The float was dotted right down to the tiniest pimple, so the bites were really finicky. I tried both the other rigs, but the the double bulk was by far the best.
I topped up the groundbait after an hour and this brought several more bites, I had also been feeding a 5-6m line with caster by hand and the margin in front of the dead rushes with maggot and caster. I kept the skimmers coming by topping the groundbait when bites tailed off, the groundbait had caster, pinkie and a few maggots in each ball.
To rest the 12.5m line I had a drop in the margin and lost a good perch, before landing a small one and a roach, before that went dead. The wind was swapping round and I did feed a caster line with the catapult to fish the waggler, having had some success doing this in the past on this lake, but I was bitted out with small roach apart from one lone F1.
I could see that several anglers round the lake were catching F1's and carp, so my best bet for a pick up was to concentrate on the silvers, back on the 12.5 m line I switched to a worm head on the hook and this produced several decent skimmers, the best of which was close to 3lb.
With an hour to go, there were a few pin prick bubbles coming up from the 12.5m line and I cupped in a few more caster and some loose GB. Next drop in saw the float bury and a F1had taken the worm head, before in the next couple of drop-in's the skimmers had returned. With 40 minutes to go, I think I made a mistake, the bigger skimmers / bream were in front of me and thought topping up the feed would keep them there until the end, either this or another big skimmer that waddled and wallowed its way in, after jumping, virtually killed the line off, seeing just one fish in the last half hour.
A lovely days fishing to round off the league, even though I was only about halfway in the main section and ounced out of the mini section, my 30.14 of silvers was enough to take 2nd (silvers) on the day and a nice £100 envelope. 34lb won the silvers from spring lake, with some high 20's coming in behind.
As a team it was a poor day, with Fred winning his lake from 73, the others had tough days, a tough league with some shocking draws, but where else would you get a 95 pegger, good pick ups and the big match atmosphere and banter. Not sure I will commit to much else next winter, but hopefully will be back for this.
No comments:
Post a Comment