After a hectic few weeks it was nice to get back to relative normality, I even managed a few days relaxing in the garden! Perhaps I should have made a few rigs up, as making up the rigs on the bank meant I was late starting.
With a full house I didn't really know where I wanted to draw, but I was happy with the peg I drew (66) as I had a bit of room. First line of attack was at 16m to the island up the side of a small clump of reeds, fishing in about 20 inches of water. The rig was a NG Floats XTM on .15 line direct to an 18 Fox Series 2 hook with Preston 15h lakky finishing it off. The Margin rig was about 10m down the edge to my left in 3ft of water, a .2gr DC5 float on .18 line direct to a 16 Fox Series 2 and purple hydro, proper summer gear! Last up was for the 2+2 line. In about 5ft of water float was .3gr NG decker on .17 line to a .15 hook-link and an 18 Fox Series 2, with black hydro the lakky.
The margin line was fed with a medium pot of hemp, corn and meat while the 2+2 line had half a pot of corn with a small amount of hemp. I then baited up the far bank rig with a 6mm expander and filled the toss-pot up with 6mm hard pellets. It didn't take long to get a response, but unfortunately it was from bait robbing small roach! A switch to a banded hard pellet saw me briefly hook a fish but it came off after a few minutes. I could hear that others were catching but it took 45 minutes until my first carp fell, a common of about 3lb. I topped up the margin line after (I was loose feeding with corn on the 2+2 line)
No more bites followed long on the hard pellet apart from odd roach knocks so I decided to top up the long line with a quarter of a pot of pellets. I had brief tries on the two closer lines but had no response even though I could see fish cruising so I went back across. I had an instant response with another common of about 3lb but again the swim went quiet again. The next hour and a half produced two more carp of about 3lb, both times after resting the long line but I couldn't raise a bite from either of the two other lines.
With just over two hours to go I dropped across and had three carp in three drops over half a pot of pellets (I'd abandoned the toss-pot due to the wind), all three about the 4lb mark before the swim totally died. I topped it up but the bites didn't come back so I had a brief try on the 2+2 line, which produced one missed bite that was suspiciously roachy. I'd fed a pot of bait in the margin before trying the 2+2 line and when I dropped in the edge with a cube of meat it'd been in for about 5 minutes before the float buried and a sluggish fish chugged out of the swim. After 5 minutes (in which the fish woke up) a common of about 8lb was in the net. A brief try after gave no joy so I topped up the swim again.
The next hour was barren where ever I tried so with nothing to lose I fed a whole pot of bait on each of the two closer lines. I tried a cube of meat on the 2+2 line and this quickly got a response from a mirror about 5lb, and next chuck a common of about the same size fell too. No more bites followed so I kept rotating the two closer lines but had nothing to show but a liner from the margins until 10 minutes before the end when another common of about 5lb fell to meat on the 2+2 line.
With 11 carp at the end for a weight I'd guess to be in the early to mid 40's I thought I'd done well until I heard that one angler was admitting to 17 and two people had 13. When the scales got to me 35lb was top weight. My fish went a level 44lb and I didn't follow the scales after as I expected a few others to beat me and I still had stuff to pack away. When I got to the car park it turned out that my weight was good enough for 2nd and I was just 3lb 6oz behind 1st. The weights were close, with just 12lb separating the top 5.
I have to admit I enjoyed the day, I had to work the bait a lot to get bites and coming second was a result much better than I thought, but being just one fish short of first makes me think I could have perhaps sneaked out one more!
Next week is the May Bank Holiday pairs match, we came joint first last year, this year we're hoping not to share that honour!
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