14/03/09 - Lands End - Match Lake

Weight – 13lb 0oz
Catch – 24 Perch, 16 Roach, 3 Rudd, 1 Crucian, 1 Bream.
Weather – Windy and sunny.
Water Temp– 10.0c > 10.0c
Match – Open – 11th overall.

You can tell spring is on its way, as well as the water temperature increasing, so are the match attendance’s. 17 turned up for today and Mike decided to put everyone on Match Lake.

I was looking forward to catching some carp today, but peg 8 is probably 1 of the worse on the lake, particularly with pegs 6 & 10 in. If I wanted a days fishing it was likely I needed to fish for silvers.

Normally along this bank, I would fish under a spare platform, however with every other peg in, meant I would be competing with the next anglers for the platforms. So I was thrilled to see Nicky Collier, who is an excellent silver fish angler on peg 6 and Andy France on peg 10. I wasn’t going to have an easy day after all.

Although I didn’t except too many carp, I still put in some micro pellet at the bottom of the shelf, flicking 4mm over the top, just is case a few did turn up. As for my silvers line, caster went down the bottom the near shelf towards peg 9, 5m slightly to my left and tight to the far side.

After 15mins, I didn’t have a bite on the pellet, so I switched to the 5m line, which only produced small roach & perch. Nick however had caught the same number of fish as me, but they were pound plus ide!

Time to try the far side, toss potting caster. I stayed on this line for over an hour, catching mostly perch up to 1½lb on caster.

Half way into the match, I was up to 30 fish for about 8lb, but the wind was increasing in strength and cutting across me more, which meant presenting the bait, as well as holding the pole at 14m, was becoming more difficult.

I felt I was level with Nick and Andy wasn’t far behind either, however it become obvious we were away from the carp, since most of them were being caught down the windward end of the lake. I had continued to feed my 5m & right hand margin line with caster, as well as keeping the 4mm going in over my pellet line. Surprising I only caught a few fish from my 5m line and only a few from the margin swim.

With an hour to go, things had slowed, not just for me, but also those around me. I decided to give up on the far side and concentrate in the near side. A change of tact was required, so 2 handfuls of maggot & caster went in at the bottom of the left margin shelf, hoping for a couple of late tench, plus I put a little caster in on top of the near shelf.

15mins to go I had managed a 1½lb crucian, a pound perch and a few bites, but was struggling for bites again. I was slightly ahead of Nick, but 2 late tench meant he won the silvers with 17lb. The top 3 for the match came from windy end of the lake, apparently there was loads of carp boshing on the end island opposite pegs 2 & 23.

After much mickey taking during the weigh in Nick was good enough to say I fished a good match, it was just a crap peg. If peg 10 wasn’t in, I would have definitely caught more, however that’s now 4 matches without a pick up, which is my worse run so far at Lands End. I was actually 4oz away from picking up 2nd in silvers by double default!