Not Much To Report!

My blog will continue as normal in a few weeks, I'm just having a bit of a break from matches at the moment! I've had a bit of time on the river (unsuccessfully!) after carp, and have enjoyed the change of scenery, travelling light and coming and going as I want - even if I can only catch great big snotty's on boilies!

I'm starting a new job soon so you may have to bare with erratic updates - I'm guessing sometimes they'll not appear until a Tues or Wed, but I'll do my best to keep everything updated. Until then, I have a little more than a week to catch me my first river carp in five years......

Sunday June 2nd

Well, it's only taken until June but at last some better weather seems to have arrived! Back on the old lake and I fancied a draw around the island but the ol' drawing hand let me down again and I drew peg 42 - the furthest away from the island I could get, and yet again the first peg on the lake and on the scales! At least if I didn't catch I'd get to see some fish.....

While 42 has absolutely no form of late it's a peg I quite like, and have done well from in the past - it's not as deep as most of the other open water pegs which I think makes it easier to get the fish to go down to the bottom. First up was a rig for 13m out, although this rig also doubled for my 2+2 line with it being just 3in shallower here. This was a .3gr NG Decker, with the rig finished with a .15 hook-link and a size 16 hook and matched to black hydro on a pull bung. Second rig up was a short margin rig for 5m in case the fish came close (they didn't!), and the third was long down the margin at 11m on the corner of the sleeper of the un-used peg 41. Line and hooks here were the same as for the open water rig, while the float was a .2gr NG XTM, lakky was Preston 15h. Last up was a shallow rig for the open water to try and mug one or two of the cruising fish.

On the whistle I fed a small amount of hemp and corn long, while the 2+2 got a bit more bait and a few cubes of meat added too. I left the margin lines to start with. Now, In all the times I've had this peg it's been a late goer and yesterday was no exception! Everyone I could see was catching odd fish in the first few hours (the next peg had two very quick, and was then told-off for fishing too shallow and didn't catch anymore - naughty boy!) while it took me until the halfway mark of the six hour match to get a bite! That was on the short margin on the only time I saw a fish there and it came off shortly after hooking it and left me with a scale on the hook!

I didn't go long down the edge until late, having about two hours to go, leaving it as a safe area for fish to back off too. By feeding tiny amounts of bait via the smallest Preston Cad-Pot I had two fish in fairly quick succession  - one on meat and one on corn. The indications faded slightly so I had a drop on the 2+2 line and had a bite here, and missed it!

Two more fish on the long margin both on corn put me in mind for a late charge, and with forty minutes to go I had two fish in a row on the 2+2 line. My hopes of a (very) late bug-up halted there when the peg to my right threw all his bait in as he packed up, including a load of expanders which had dried out during the day (so they said) which floated! Every carp in the area seemed to make a beeline for the pile of floaters and my swim which had been progressively getting better sharply took a turn and I never had any more indications. What a prat!

My six fish went 20lb 3oz, which was actually in second place behind peg 53's 60lb odd (from the windward corner), until the last two pegs to weigh narrowly pushed me down to fourth with 23lb odd and 21lb 2oz. That said, one angler round the island certainly tipped back a second placed weight (ten carp) after someone told them everyone in the open was bagging! Oops...

In hindsight I fed too much, and feeding both margins with tiny amounts (and perhaps going long in the edge earlier) would have got me a couple more fish. Considering it's June the water felt surprisingly cool when I took my nets out, and I think I, along with others perhaps overdone it a bit! Still, with the weather forecast to hold both warm and steady all week hopefully the fish will know where they are after the topsy-turvy weather of the last seven months, and maybe they'll even have a good feed before they spawn! Here's hoping..