19/05/11 - Rood Ashton

Weight – 23lb 0oz
Catch – 7 Carp
Weather – Breezy & sunny
Match – Wiltshire Angling Evening Open – 12th (out of 17)

This summer I wanted to fish an evening series. The problem however was where to go. Although I live in Bristol, I work in Bath, so finding a venue was going to be tricky.

Mark told me that Wiltshire Angling as of last week was running a float only series at Rood Ashton. Draw at 5pm, fish 5.45 – 9.00 - perfect. Fortunately I park my car in a private car park, which is relatively secure, so I can leave my kit in the car, drive straight to the lake in 20/25 minutes and get changed in the car park.

17 booked in today, which for an evening match isnt bad. I drew peg 10 which is on the small spit on the top bank. The same peg Mark won from last week with 68lb and a noted flyer. Alas I didn’t do it justice.

After the very cold winter, there were rumours that most of the carp had died, due to the very shallow nature of the lake. That’s the thing with rumours, they are rarely based on fact, because there are still plenty of fish in the lake.

I have only been to the venue a few times, but already developing love/hate relationship and today was a bit a hate day. Having never fished the top bank, I hadn’t realised how shallow these pegs are, about 1ft, all the way out to 13m. In fact the deepest part was tight into my RH margin, were I had a couple more inches, which meant 1 paste rig did all, although a duplicate was setup just in case. I also set up a pellet rig and I had 2 pellet waggler rods already made up.

Feed would be 6mm’s on the pole and 8mm’s for waggler. Being sheltered from the wind, my peg was flat calm and any ripple was 30m out.

2nd put in on the paste at 13m I had a carp and after an hour I had 3 carp, but lost 2 (at least 1 was foul hooked when I came back with a scale). It was obviously fishing hard, because I couldn’t see much being caught and felt I was holding my own.

The 2nd hour is where it went wrong for me. I had been feeding the waggler line and other than 1 lost foul hooker on the full depth rig no fish. As for my pole line, there were fish moving around and I was getting plenty of liners, but the fish just wouldn’t open their mouths. I tried the pellet rig at full depth and shallow, I even swapped the hooklength and tried 4 dead maggots, but that didn’t work either. So by the end of the 2nd hour I only had 4 carp, wondering what to do next. Due to the shallow nature of the swim, I hadn’t fed heavily, because I didn’t want too many fish in the swim, but that was happening anyway, so I started feeding 2 pouches of pellet in an attempt to force the fish to get their heads down and feeding.

I also throw 4 handfuls of pellet into my RH margin, but despite their being swirls and obvious signs of movement I only had 1 carp. I again tried the pellet rig, but to no avail.

The final hour proved more productive when I just struck to fishing the paste, but I still suffered from liners and lost fish.

During the weigh in it was also obvious I had caught a few smaller than average carp. Peg 12 in my section had only 6 carp, but weighed 33lb. The general comments from everyone it fished hard and the fish didn’t really want to play ball.

Mark is on fire at the moment, winning again, with 12 carp for 58lb from the RH bank. At least I learnt a few things today and looking forward to my Thursday evenings.

1st 58-8 Mark Poppleton
2nd 53-5 Gary Etheridge
3rd 49-12 Ian Stainer