08/11/09 Lands End - Speci Lake

Weight - 26lb 12oz
Catch - 10 Perch, 7 Roach, 5 Chub, 4 Bream, 3 Rudd, 1 Carp
Weather - Cold NW wind & showers
Water Temp - 10.5c > 10.5c
Match - Lands End Winter League rd2 - 24th overall, 2nd in section

Apologised for the late blog on last Sundays match,however my laptop crashed, fortunately only £80 to fix. But why do all the bills arrive when you can least afford them?

The 2nd round of the Lands End Winter League and I was a little underwhelmed to find myself on peg 26 (Speci), because to get good section points you had to beat the normally more reliable pegs 25, 31 & 32.

This week the weather had turned much colder, with the water temperature dropping to 10.5c, so a hard match was likely and with a cold north westerly wind blowing into my face also meant an uncomfortable match.

The island was 17m away and I really wanted to avoid fishing that long, plus I wasn’t confident there would be too many carp sat on top the shelf. Initially started 15m at 11o’ clock and 13m at 1o’clock, fishing soft pellet or corn. After 90mins I had 4 skimmers, the biggest being about 1½lb, but everyone in my section was struggling.

I had fed some caster towards the pallet on peg 27, but could only catch small perch & roach, and even those weren’t coming quickly.

With 2 hours gone, the only swim I hadn’t tried was the island, but I felt I had no choice because I was starting to lose ground on the others in my section. Russ on 25 had caught a few silvers down the LH bank, Mat Dark on 28 had 1 carp and I was fairly certain that Chris & Liam on pegs 31 & 32 had a carp each.

So I bite the bullet and went 17m, feeding caster. Initially went over on my carp rig, but it was obvious there were none around, so a change to a lighter rig resulted in a run of perch & roach, but sport was never hectic, although 4x 1lb perch dropping off the hook as I shipped back was irritating.

As the match progressed a pattern emerged, where I would get a few decent silvers before the small roach intervened, at which point I would rest the swim and try elsewhere. With 2½ hours to go I tried the pallet swim again, but again nothing of value. Time to consider my options. The only place I could catch was at 17m.

My open water swims were lifeless, although I did try fishing away from where I had fed, but I now needed a carp for decent points because everyone now had at least 1. I felt the best place to catch one would be down the margin, because Mat already had a couple and lost a couple fishing to his right, so I started to fed a little heavier down the edge. I would spend 20mins fishing the far side, then fish the margins for 10mins and just keep rotating, at least this way I would keep fish coming to the net so when I hopefully had a carp, I would have a decent silvers net to go with it.

With an hour to go I realised I was fishing for 2nd in section because Mat now had 3 carp, 2 of which were double figures. A run of chublets at 17m was very useful but I still needed a carp, with 20mins to go another pot of food went in by the pallet, but this time I fed just caster. A quick rotation of swims yielded nothing. 5mins to go, back to the pallet with corn on the hook, 3mins to go I was attached to a carp! Great, just got to land it. A rather tense 10mins later I had a very large carp in the net. Russ was gutted, because he knew my 1 fish would probably weigh as much as his total catch.

As it was he weighed 15-7, my silvers weighed 9-14 and my carp was 16-14, a proper bonus fish. Mat won the section with 41-7, Chris didn’t weigh, which left Liam on peg 32. He weighed 26-11, but my weight had been recorded as 26-8, so he thought he clinched 2nd in section, however after a check of the weigh sheets my weight was corrected to 26-12, so I got 2nd in section by 1oz. This means after 2 rounds I am currently 8th overall

League to date
1 Nicky Collier 12 (142- 7)
2 Dean Malin 12 (80-13)
3 Rod Wootton 11 (113-8)
4 Dave Hodgson 11 (87-14)
5 Mat Tomes 10 (147-0)
6 Vince Shipp 10 (118-13)
7 Mitchell Artus 10 (110-3)
8 Ken Rayner 10 (64-7)