30/10/09 - Lands End - Match Lake

Weight – 53lb 8oz
Catch – 9 Carp, 2 Bream, 1 Crucian
Weather – Mostly sunny & calm
Water Temp– 14.0c > 14.0c
Match – Open – 3rd overall

The weather dictated whether I would fish Saturday or Sunday, with Sundays forecast for gales and rain. As I write this blog on Sunday morning, looking outside I know I made the right to decision because it’s hosing it down and the wind is pushing the trees sideways.

Today I was going for my 5th pick up on the bounce, but found myself on peg 1. This is only the 3rd time I have drawn here, however recent results from the peg have been disappointing and looking at the results for the last 4 matches, showed between 26 & 36lb.

Carp or silvers? I felt I was up against it today, on what has been a very average peg recently. There was a few carp boshing by the island and under the tree at 17m along the left hand bank, so I decided on the carp, although I did set up a swim in open water, feeding micro pellet for the skimmers.

I started at the bottom the shelf by the island and after 10 mins had a skimmer on corn. In fact that was the only fish I had corn, everything else came to Tony’s soft pellet. Another skimmer and a crucian came from the open water swim, but with it being bright and flat the skimmers didn’t want to feed.

All the while I had been flicking 4mm along the left hand bank hoping to draw the carp from under the tree, as well as keeping the bottom of the island shelf topped up again with 4mm.

The LH bank produced a small carp within 5mins of trying, but other than 1 other that snagged me in the tree I never had another fish from this swim. I was getting indication, but no proper bites. Mike West on 24 was having the same problem.

Half way into the match I only had 2 carp, plus my silvers. I thought about switching feed to caster and trying for some silvers, but I couldn’t see the point, because I was way behind in the silvers pool, so I stuck with the carp. Fabio on peg 3 already had 6 or 7 and I could hear Rod Wootten on peg 6 catching, so I needed a late surge.

I couldn’t get any proper indications fishing down the shelf, the LH bank was proving frustrating, so I started flicking 4mm tight to the island which saw a further 2 carp netted. With 70 minutes to go I was up to 4.

I kept the feed going into the island, but also decided to deposit ¾pt caster, pellet & corn tight into my RH margin. There were carp moving around the island now and I decided to shallow up even further to get tighter across. In the last hour I landed 5 carp, 2 from the RH margin and 3 tight to the island. All of sudden I thought
I might be in with a shout of framing, however speaking to others I started thinking 4th would be the best I could hope for.

The weigh in started in reverse from peg 24, Kev Molton weighed 46lb from peg 18, and Alan Oram had 66lb from peg 16. Darren Roberts 10 carp from peg 11 went 49lb and Rod won the match with 69lb. Dave Wescott won the silvers from peg 5 with 19lb and Fabio’s 9 carp went 32lb (proper squeakers).

So I needed 49lb to frame and I honestly thought I had 40-45lb. My silvers weighed 4½lb, but when I lifted my carp net it felt close to 50lb and decided on 2 weighs. The 1st went 32lb, which meant my remaining 3 carp had to be more than 12½lb and I was really pleased when the needle settled on 17lb.

Overall really happy with how I approached the match. The turning point was taking 2 decent carp from my right hand margin and shallowing up further to get tight to the island. The water temperature had increased to 14c, which probably why the fish didn’t really want to settle on the deck.