The benefit of me generally choosing to fish on Mondays over bank holiday weekend is that I get to cook a nice Sunday roast! The downside is, I nearly always miss a good match on the Sunday, and this one was no different. The match on the new lake was won with 102lb, and with back-up weights of 80lb+ and 70lb+ which is very good for the venue.
As per the last few weeks I didn't really get much of a look round the lake we were fishing as I helped the owner with the tree chopping again. When I dipped in the bag pretty much all the pegs I wanted had gone, and peg 51 came out in my hand. Even with out walking round I just had a feeling it would be a struggle given all the rain we had, plus the cooling down of the air temperature too. Despite having won off the peg a few weeks before, I really wanted to be in the open water, not in the shallowest arm of the island.
I had the usual three rigs up for the day - one for the margins which done both left and right, one for 5m and one for 15m as tight to the island as I could get. I'm sure you know the rigs by now, so I wont go over them again. I have to admit setting up I was worried by the lack of movement - and I was sure it was going to be hard.
Without dragging it out too much, hard it was! I didn't even get knocks from small fish across on pellet. Odd fish would come in to the margins mooching, but they'd shy away instantly. I did hook two fish in a short spell down the edge about mid way through the match. The first one came off near the net, and the second one charged off snapping the .17 hook-link, so in all likely hood it was foul hooked.
I could only see one other angler, and he was suffering the same fate as me. It was an hour before the end when I put my first fish in the net - a small common of about a pound from the 5m line. At the same time the angler I could see caught their first fish too! I managed to eek out a few fish in that last hour fishing corn at 5m, all taken by spreading the bulk out and bites came as the corn hit the bottom. I managed five more carp, all between 3-4lb, and lost a big common of near double figures. It charged off in the shallow water and behind a lilly-bed in the next peg. I had no choice but to lift the pole and get the elastic over the lillys else I would have lost the fish anyway, but doing so meant rather predictably the hook pulled.
I didn't bother to weigh my fish, tipping back around 17lb I'd guess. The whole lake fished hard mind, as while 70lb odd won from peg 70 in the open (fishing down the edge under a tree I believe), just 30lb was good enough for second and 28lb for third, so the lost fish cost me a placing. In hindsight, I wish I'd fished a softer elastic at 5m - that big fish may not have charged off then (but it may!), but at the end of the day there just wasn't a head of fish in front of me to go at. Looking on a few internet forums, it seems that most places didn't fish too well - I can only guess due to the weather. Still, there's always next week!
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