It was nice to sit back and relax as a passenger today, Tony
Rixon being the chauffeur for the day.
All the talk before the match was that pegs 124-126 and 68-71 would be
the ones to draw. I had some banter with Bob Gullick about drawing peg 80,
which is definitely one to avoid and luckily, he pulled it from the tin before
I stuck my hand in. 64 for me, a classic
corner carp peg, which I have never managed to draw in a ‘normal’ match…… Not one you’d normally run to for silvers,
but with £750 up for grabs it was still worth going and trying.
As I walked up to the peg, I could see Nicky Ewers on peg
66, he said “Oh, I thought it was bad enough drawing here, now it’s just got
worse” my close presence is not seen as much of a good luck charm nowadays,
given the regularity that I manage to draw the low weight sections. Still, it meant that we would have a bit of
banter if the fish didn't want to play ball.
I had brought a waggler rod and lead rod, neither of which
would see the light of day, as if Nicky and I had fished 16m we would have been
pole tip fencing, as we both had an empty peg to one side, I do think it would
be better to peg 63 and 66 or 64 and 67 in silvers matches, but that’s just a
personal opinion. 4 topkits set up, one
to fish the margins either side in search of a perch, a 0.20 Jean Desque to
fish for roach short and two skimmer rigs, one with the normal bulk and two
droppers, one with a double bulk. All with 0.10 hooklengths and 18 hooks, except
the margin rig which had 0.12 and a 16 on.
I could see the regular inhabitants of the peg, porpoising
in front of the tree opposite, so I did not intend to fish to my right at all,
except the margin, which was fed with caster, I fed a short line with caster, a
line about 7m with GB and caster and an line at 13m with GB and caster. Leaving the GB lines to settle I had a couple
of roach on the short line, but it was short lived, as the just pushed out and
with £750 to fish for, they were just too small to be worth the effort. I could get the odd fish on the GB lines, but
of no size and the length of time waiting for a bite meant I was unlikely to be
threatening the stack of envelopes in the fishery office.
I decided to start a new GB line at 13m at about 1 o’clock
to my right, this produced two proper skimmers in the first two drop-in’s much
to my surprise, but the water was sheltered here, as there was a chill wind
blowing down the lake, coming right through the gap in the trees, straight at
me. The rest of my match was spent
concentrating on this line, with an occasional look at the other lines, they
remained resolutely biteless, the RH line settled into a regular routine, feed,
catch a couple of carp and then a couple of skimmers, it would then go dead,
feed gain, more carp, then a couple more skimmers, frustrating to have to get
the carp, but there were plenty of them in the peg, it was as they came in over
the feed and tore through it, then the skimmers came to see if the carp had
left any pickings, when they moved off.
The best bait was a section of worm, about 1” – 1½” long,
caster meant the same wait for a bite, but it was more likely to be a roach, I
toyed with the idea of putting some corn in, but decided against it, maybe I
should have tried it. As I thought
initially, I didn’t trouble the framing positions from that peg, but was
pleased to have done enough with the skimmers to take the section win by 7lb,
with my 20.09. As the results show, the
pre match predictions of the pegs to draw, weren’t exactly accurate, good thing
really.
1: Mark Saunders 35.01 peg 112
2: Gabriel Skarba 32.06 peg 99
3: Steve Denmead 29.01 peg 129
4: Andy Power 28.11 peg 68
5: Steve Tucker 26.04 peg 110
6: Paul Elmes 26.03 peg 78
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