05/06/11-Todber Manor - Park Lake

Weight – 65lb 8oz
Catch – 23 Carp, 14 F1, 4 Roach, 3 Tench
Weather – Cloudy, persistent rain later
Match – MFS – 13th out of 21

Today was a lesson in fishing to your strengths and going against the norm isn’t always the best approach.

Firstly the weather looked like it would have an effect. Following a couple days of warm weather, we now had very heavy rain overnight and the drive down was difficult as some roads were flooded. Fortunately by the draw the rain had stopped.

My peg for the day was 33, 1 up from where I was last time, so not impressed, since I struggled to catch carp although I caught plenty of F1s. Today, however I decided to focus on the carp and if I could ignore the F1’s. Unlike the last time, I could at least fish the far bank since the wind wasnt too bad. In a bid to avoid the F1, feed was 6mm pellet instead of 4mm and when fishing the far side I didn’t catapult any feed.

The 1st hour went exactly to plan, fishing paste tight to the far bank, feeding only the paste, plus 10x pellet via a toss pot, I landed 10 carp and 1 F1. Moving into the 2nd hour I started getting more liners and silly bites landing very few fish.

Moving into the 3rd hour I relented and decided to feed by catapult, fishing shallow, but tight to the far bank, again to avoid the F1’s. This produced a few more carp on 8mm before the F1s moved in again.

I had been feeding 6mm at 6m and in the margins. The margins produced very little, whilst my 6m line was full of fish, but targeting the carp was frustrating. I was missing so many fish on paste, which was obviously smaller pecking at the bait, however switching to pellet or corn I had to wait for a bite and it only produced smaller fish. Following a previous discussion with Mark, he feeds heavily with pellet and I went through 8pts.

Fishing paste today just wasn’t right, there are just so many fish in the lake, that unless you are on the noted carp flyers you need a bait with more durability. The top 3 all used meat.

The weights either side of me was 52lb & 69lb, so I wasn’t drawn in a great area. Having said that, I should have picked up my section (albeit by default) had I targeted the F1’s shallow, feeding 4mm, I would have caught at least 30-40lb which would have been enough. Lesson learned, but over the last 4 weeks that seem to be the story of my fishing at the moment.

Oh and the last 2 hours of persistent rain made me even more miserable, although not as miserable as the angler who pulled his net out, only to find a big hole and no fish. Doh! Should have checked the net before using it.

1st 190-13 Steve Tucker – peg 38
2nd 181- 6 Will Bohne – peg 28
3rd 115-10 Fred Roberts – peg 37
4th 112- 6 Mark Poppleton – peg 25
5th 106- 8 Ashley Tomkins – peg 13
6th 92- 4 Ian Browney – peg 1