Tony Rixon's Short Pole League, R2, Trinity Waters, Sunday 27th June 2021

 I used to be quite a regular here, but what with other commitments and not so many opens on here, I don't get down too often. It's an old brick pit, so a bit deeper than most commercials, although some of the work done on the lake and the silting up that is impossible to avoid has reduced the depth from when I first started fishing it.

Its also not had a stocking for a while and has a head of big carp, but no smaller ones to stir them up and as we know, big carp can be moody and have days they don't really feed for the duration of the match.  With 24 on today and restricted to 3 sections + topkit, I suspected a tough day and thought 2 or 3 converted bites an hour would be enough.

Paste, pellets and dead maggots would be my mainstay baits, with some worms for the hook, you can use meat here, but I have never caught on it (although a few years back, Coshida was a decent margin bait, so catmeat was OK).

Paste rig and pellet rig for on the deck, rig for each margin, as they were different depths (small moan here - I was on peg 13, the only peg in the section without a spare peg one side..... but it's tricky to peg it any other way, so it is not a serious moan).

Well, 30 minutes in and a double figure fish in the net on past, nice, but usually on here when you feed you get the jacuzzi effect, not today. I gave it until the hour mark and switched to a line away from the paste, fishing 6mm banded pellet, another carp, so slow but steady progress.

Lets now jump several biteless hours, where I tried everything and could not get even a liner.  The Grand Prix was on in my headphones, so I at least had some entertainment, I potted a 3/4 of a big pot of dampened 4's in, shit or bust really and did get some activity in the peg, hooking a another double on worm over the pellet, hook pulled at the net, so that summed up the day, I hooked and lost a fouler and then nothing again.  Had one 5 minutes from the end on paste, so 4 bites in 6 hours, not my idea of fun really.  I couldn't even catch a skimmer on bits of worm.

The lake fished hard, back there for R3 in two weeks, so may have to rethink the approach, but in all fairness it fished hard for most.