Mike Nicholls 13m Pole Match, Viaduct, Saturday 10th June 2017

I nearly missed this match, as I obviously hadn't marked in on my calendar or put it in my phone when I booked in, thankfully Mike saw I had booked in at Landsend and rang to ask if I was fishing his match.  Glad he did, I hate letting people down.

I usually like to get in at the start of the draw, but only 4 tickets left in when I drew, two were wedged together, so I dropped them back in the tin and picked up one of the two solo tickets, couldn't be too disappointed when I opened it and saw 110.  Its been several years since I have drawn it, but I have never failed to pick up money from it, so challenge on.

Without any rods to set up, there was no race to get to the peg, given that we still had 90 minutes to tackle up.  I had intended to just fish pellet and meat, but at the last minute chucked some maggots and a bag of paste into the bait bag, just to some options if I needed them.  7 topkits set up, a paste rig, a shallow rig, two meat rigs, a pellet rig, margin rig and one for down to the brambles.

Started on meat short and had two carp and a tench, before that line died off, a switch to 13m and 6mm pellet brought a few more carp to the net, but this started going 'iffy', I did try paste over the pellet feed and had one carp and a few liners.  There were fish there showing themselves, but I could not catch shallow, Joe McMahon on the next peg was in the same boat, not sure why they wouldn't take it shallow.

The middle of the match was a bit of a nightmare, I had several carp and a couple of tench by the stump, but that didn't last too long either.  Reluctantly I had to go up to the brambles and even fishing off bottom I was picking up sticks and twigs on the hook.  I had one fish out for 6 lost, solid 14 elastic, pulling as hard as I could, the fish were running through all the debris and cutting through the line - not a type of fishing I enjoy.

I had to give up on fishing to the brambles, as a Tourette's outburst was imminent if I stayed with it.  A look around the other lines again brought just the one skimmer, I had been feeding the edge between my pallet and the stump, at 4pm, there were signs of fish there after several fruitless looks in the previous hour or so.  Dropping in with maggots was a waste of time, so I switched to 10mm meat and this proved to be the right choice as I had another 6 or 7 fish in the last hour and lost a couple more, as it was a case of hit, slide the pole back and pull the elastic, as they were trying to get round the stump.

My few silvers and the carp went 147.05 for 4th on the day and a section win, so not all bad, just a few rigs to retie ready for tomorrow!!