Traveling down with Tony, we chatted about the effect the wind blowing to the car park end of the lakes would have, as the fish have certainly followed it.
I decided to stick to getting in the draw tin early and wasn't overjoyed to see 123 staring back at me, whilst Tony drew 109, both feast or famine pegs, but with the wind blowing into 109 for a week, it was likely to be one its better days. 123 had not fared too well on the Saturday open, but there is always a chance that the fish have gone into the corner.
Enough time to set up a lead rod, which once again went away at the end with the line dry, with Gary Ethridge on 121 there was limited scope to fish long, two waggler rods, one full depth, one shallow - I had a cast or two to get my range for the shallow wag and landed it tight to the end bank, float dipped and fish on, a 4lb common took the pellet band. That is usually the kiss of death and Gary reminded me, Dave Cockayne on 124 offered a landing net, but i had already set mine up.
4 topkits, shallow, full depth pellet plumbed up at 14.5m, meat short and margin for the LH edge down to the corner. It was a slow start, the waggler to the end bank didn't produce a bite, a few casts with no feed, then light feed, all of which was to no avail, the wind was strong and gusty enough to be a nuisance, it was coming almost straight at me, but slightly L to R. A couple of fish on the short meat line by feeding negatively saw something go in the net, but it was another day of looking up the lake seeing elastic streaming out and landing nets working overtime.
The 14.5m line did not produce as much as a bite, I set up a paste rig and tried some paste at about 7m off at 11 0'clock, this gave up 1 skimmer and one carp. The carp were a decent size, just few and far between, Gary was suffering the same fate and 119 was similarly suffering, we were all waiting ages for a bite, there just seemed to be a few resident bigger fish this end, with nothing to stir them up and get some competition going.
I didn't go down the edge for 3 hours, trying to leave it to settle, having fed some pellet and meat, I did venture down there at the halfway point and had a 14lber, then a smaller common before it was as dead as the rest of the lines, I had a two hour spell where I didn't have a bite, I couldn't even raise a small skimmer.....
With an hour to go I mixed up some GB and put this down the edge with maggot, I had two more fish on it, but these were the only bites and indications on the float, the peg certainly wasn't rammed with fish. With hindsight, it might have paid to fish maggot down the edge from the start, meat short and long, just fished really negatively for one fish in the peg at a time, I do find this difficult to do when the pegs in the opposite quarter of the lake are bagging, I guess I tried to force it slightly and that was wrong on the day. There was no way, no matter what I did, I would have competed with the weights that framed, but I might have eked out a couple more section points, as I only managed to beat Gary on 121, my 108, just trumping his 103. there were a couple of low 120's in the section, but that's it now. apart from 3 section wins and others having disasters, its series over and look at the next matches as 55 peg opens.
1. Andrew Crocker – 309lb 5oz – peg 77
2. Tony Gilbert – 296 2oz – peg 53
3. Callum Craig – 256lb 12oz – peg 135
4. Rob Giles – 247lb 13oz – peg 112
5. Steve Seager – 220lb 10oz – peg 114
6. Gary O’Shea – 205lb 14oz – peg 103
No comments:
Post a Comment