Well, after my mini rant two weeks ago after winter flyer peg 18 on the New Lake at Westside I actually went and drew it for the first time ever! However, just as I put my box down on my peg the heavens opened! I was also concerned that I was the only angler with someone next peg (I think) with peg 17 being in. Why does that happen to me, it never seems to be in otherwise! Could that be an omen of what the day was to hold?
The peg is quite wide (I'll try and get the pic up soon, my photo thingy is playing up!-update, I deleted the pic by accident! Oooops!). There is a small bay on the island, with the far bank steadily sloping up towards it. I decided to put up just two rigs to fish along the far bank, one just over 3ft deep and the other around 2ft 6in deep. It took just over 16m of pole to use the deeper rig on my side of the slope, and 17m the other side of the bay, and could just reach the shallow side of the bay next to some reeds with 17.6m of pole with the shallow rig, which I could also try over the deeper line. Both rigs were on .14dia line to a 16B611 on Preston 13h elastic. the deeper rig had a 4x12 Preston Somo float adapted to take a plastic tip, and the shallow rig was a 4x10 Preston Black in-line dibber.
On the whistle I cupped in a few casters and a couple of grains of hemp on the nearest deepr swim, I didn't want to feed further up and on the other side of the bay to start with, to give the fish somewhere to back off too, so I could hopefully rotate to keep odd fish coming. After 7 or 8 mins with a bit of corn on the hook and no bites I put on two red maggots and started to drip odd casters in with a toss-pot. The float settled and shot under and I was thinking 'here we go!', yet all that was on the end was a small perch, less than an ounce in weight. That proved to be the only sign of life for the next hour in my swim, then two ghosties cruised through my swim.
To cut a long and rater boring story short no matter what I tried, and where in the swim I tried it, nothing happend apart from an odd liner.That was until an hour before the end of the match. By this time peg 17 had just started to pack up, having not had a bite. I missed a bite on the nearest deeper swim and then had a 2lb common followed by one about 6lb next drop, both on single caster. By this time I could see one person (peg 20) with 4 carp and someone else with 2 so thought that a good last hour would give me a chance, but as soon as it had started it had stopped! The next bite gave just one tiny roach. Five mins before the end I missed a bite, then had a chunky 4lb mirror carp, then missed a bite seconds before the whistle. I have to say I was thoroughly gutted!
The match was won with 44lb from peg 33 (the peg in the corner I won from late in September) the peg to my left had 24lb for 2nd and 21lb was 3rd. My 3 carp gave me just over 13lb which was good enough for 4th. I sat and pondered the whole way home what had gone wrong, but I honestly believe I didn't have fish infront of me. Perhaps it was the rain, which felt very cold (and wasn't forecast!) but I don't know, I really don't. Two bad weeks in a row now, we can only hope for next week I guess!
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