Short Pole Series, Round Two, Trinity Waters. Sunday 17th May 2015

I was expecting this to fish well after the warmer weather and wind oxygenating the water, but it proved to be a struggle for many!!

With a couple of the league anglers off watching some pointless non-league football match, we had some stand-in's, so the match was up to strength in numbers.  Bob Gullick did look a bit upset when he realised the bridge pegs on the venue weren't on the lake we were fishing.......

When I got to the draw tin, Tony said, "at least most of the pegs on the top bank are gone", as that is the one area I have never won or framed from on this lake, so what come out, 17 on the top bank, oh well, it has to produce for me one day surely and with the wind blowing towards it, why not today.  He couldn't smile too much at my misfortune, as he had been handed peg 18, so it was going to be an interesting battle between us, although on reflection, interesting may well be a misleading description.

We set up similar rigs to fish pellet, meat short and the margins, although I knew Tony would have a band on his pellet rig whereas I intended to start on soft pellet. I had some paste on the tray, 6 and 8mm pellets, 8mm meat and dead maggots, but on plumbing the margins and finding nearly 4' and a steep drop off with no shelf, I didn't think they'd see the hook.

Starting on the soft pellet over hard feed 6mm pellets I had a little wait for bites, before landing a small carp and a skimmer. It was painfully slow going, to get any sort of reaction from the peg, it needed feed going in, but bites were few and far between, with the odd skimmer gracing the net.  I then lost a 3ln tench, hmmm, I was trying a different elastic and maybe a match where I was looking for a section win at least, wasn't the ideal time to do it.

The short meat line produced one fish, a hybrid with huge eyes, but it was only 3 or 4 ounces, so not much more to say about that.

A switch to worm on the hook over the pellet line, saw a couple of carp and a couple more skimmers netted, before this died off again. The margin resulted in one fish, another small carp, thereafter, every put in ended up in a snag and another MW float bit the dust as if flew back into the keepnet.

I decided to concentrate on the long line and fed some dead maggot in with the pellet, this with 3 dead maggots on the hook produced two more carp and some more big skimmers, a 3lb+ fish coming off, that new elastic wasn't right for skimmers really, but they weren't the target. So a tough day, with some entertainment from Tony, as he had a torrid day, snapping a No6 section and a topkit, I thought I had him beaten, but was expecting to be 3rd or 4th in the section, so was pleasantly surprised to get second in section, still keeping the league alive, but I think only 2 section wins will do now.  Also my silvers got second, so an envelope for the 3rd day in a row.

Best bit of the day was the news that the non league team from oop north had scored, worst news was when the non league team from oop north Bristol  fluked a penalty shoot out win, even so boys "Mind The Gap........"

1: Rod Wotton  117.12 peg 6
2: Paul Elmes 87.12 peg 25
3: Mike Nichols 79.04 peg 22
4: Craig Edmunds 79.03 peg 9
5: Bob Gullick 61.14 peg 13
6: Adrian Jeffery 59.11 peg 33

Silvers
1: Paul Faiers 25.07 peg 31
2: Chris Fox 14.03 peg 17