Well, it was a bit novel not to be dodging rain in the morning! (it's back now as I write though) It had apparently rained during the night, but being as Saturday night was my sleep catch-up night after working at night during the week I didn't hear it. And by the time I was up and about for the later 11am draw any sign had long since gone! Infact, the sun even came out.... for a bit!
I had a bit of a wonder round, but didn't really fancy anywhere on the lake over any other. When my hand came out of the bag I had a double take at the number, 51. On all the occasions I've fished matches on the lake, I've never drawn it (or 50, which is more usually in, but underwater at the moment)
I had the typical three rigs up, with the first for the island. At 15m, with the gusty wind it was going to be awkward (I took the picture after the match, as I wasn't ready until five minutes after the whistle) It was my typical far-bank rig really, with a small .1gr Nick Gilbert XTM on .17 line to a .15 hook-link and a now rather rare size 18 Fox Series 2 hook, lakky was Preston 15h. Depth was about 16in. My second rig up was for the margins, and I had a small bay just 5m to my left with a perfect looking 20in of water in, spot on that! My normal beefier margin approach matched .19 line to a .17 hook-link and a size 16 Fox Series 2 hook, while the float was a .2gr XTM. Lakky was Preston 17h. It was when plumbing up for the 2+2 line I had a surprise - it's very shallow compared to the rest of the lake! A .3gr Nick Gilbert Decker held nicely in the skim in around 4ft of water. The rig had the same terminal gear as the far-bank rig, but the lakky was black hydro on a pull-bung.
I left the margin line alone at the start for a bit, feeding half a pot of hemp and corn on the 2+2 line, before dropping a few 6mm pellets in to a small cad-pot to feed across, hoping to nick an early fish or two before the other lines kicked in. It took about half an hour of dripping in pellets before I got a response, and in that time I'd seen peg 55 catch three or for fish dobbing in the scum that had collected there. My first fish was a small carp that looked about 8oz, but it came of as I went to net it! I got the feeling it wasn't going to be my day when the next fish, which was much better came off for no reason too!
Losing that fish slowed what indications I was getting, and to be honest the gusty wind was making things awkward too. With signs of odd fish moving further along the margin to my left I fed half a pot of bait in the edge here, and then started to flick the occasional few grains of corn in by hand too, less frequently than I had been at 5m though.
On the hour mark I came away from the island and had a drop on the 2+2 line. There were very occasional signs of fish there, but no proper bites, so that led me to rotate between that line and the far bank. With a few fish visible I was sure one of the lines would start to produce soon, so it was just a case of keeping on plugging away.
On the two hour mark I was rewarded with my first proper bite on corn off the 2+2 line, and soon a decent common of about 4lb was panned. I managed five more in the next hour off this line, with one fish being a smaller 2lb'er and the rest around the 3lb mark. All fell to corn fished slightly down the swim from where the bait was going in. It was noticeable that working the bait didn't get me bites, and I just had to sit with the bait dead on the bottom and wait, which meant that changing the shotting to just a tight bulk a foot from the hook was best, resulting in clearer indications.
After that steady spell I started to notice odd fish swirling over my margin, and with the fish on the other line backing away down the peg a little I topped it up with a quarter of a cup of bait and had a go in the edge. No sooner had the double corn hit the bottom than it was away! A slightly better fish than what I had been taking from the 2+2 line too, at about 5lb. No more follwed in the next few minutes, so I topped the line up with half a cup of bait (hemp and corn) which bought the fish back. Much like the other line had been, the action here was steady rather than furious, but with two hours of the six to go I was on a fourteen carp. After the initial two carp I found I could catch by feeding a big toss-pot of bait instead of big potting, a move which seemed to bring a bite quicker when the fish came back - presumably due to there being less bait in the swim.
As tends to happen, after that decent run off the swim it started to fade, and losing a fish didn't help too. I topped it up with the big cup and went back on the 2+2 line. Initially, I tried down the peg but that didn't bring bites. I was getting more indications right on the bait, and spreading the shotting and shallowing up to just an inch over depth started to turn the knocks in to odd bites. Thankfully, the wind had eased a bit to allow me to do this!
I was plodding on with odd fish from the 2+2 swim, and every now and then I managed to nick one from the margin, although I found I had to fish single corn in the edge to get bites now. It was much slower than it had been, but the fish were of a decent stamp now, averaging 4lb. For some reason, with forty minutes to go the swim seemed to die a death, although none of the other anglers I could see were catching too. I couldn't see how those in the open water were getting on, but I was fairly well clear to those I could see, with twenty carp. Peg 55 was the nearest to me, with about a dozen.
With nothing to lose, I lashed a couple of hand-fulls of bait down the edge - it was worth a go! I gave it five minutes, before lowering in two grains of corn over the top. Before the bait had touched the bottom the elastic pulled out and after a hefty fight I netted my best fish of the day - a common of perhaps 7lb. I had just one more bite in the remaining twenty-five minutes or so, which gave me a mirror of about 5lb from the 2+2 line, but I couldn't raise a response off either swim again after that.
When I packed up a few people were admitting to around a dozen fish, while peg 72 in the reeds had twenty-four carp - two more than me. I just hoped that they would be of the smaller stamp that the reeds normally produce. My fish totalled 79lb 2oz on the scales. I pushed my barrow back up to the car park and wondered back up the lake just in time to see peg 72's weight being totalled up, with a weight of 76lb 14oz being called. That late desperado attempt for a last margin fish had quite possibly won the match for me! And the day was made better by the fact that, for the first time in a while, I sat for an entire day fishing and it didn't rain. Novel that lately, isn't it?
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