10/07/11 - Cuckoos Rest

Weight – 19lb 10oz
Catch – 27 Bream, 14 Roach, 1 Carp
Weather – Mostly cloudy with sunny periods. Very little wind
Match – Club – 3rd out of 17

I reckon I must have run over a black cat or something, because I not getting the rub of the green at the moment. A poor draw and then my 3rd broken pole section in as many weeks, together with scrapping my car against a metal bollard the other week has left me wondering. The first pole section broke when I sat on my number 4, the 2nd was when I stepped on my number 5 and today my number 8 section just collapsed on the strike. Fortunately Mark knows someone who does reasonably priced repairs. Looks like I’m in the market for a new pole when I get some money together.

Back to today. 17 had booked in and the best draws are on the side right of the island, because you don’t have anyone opposite. The left side of the lake would have people pegged all round, although most had plenty of room either side. My peg saw me half way down the left side of the island and it was 1 of the few pegs I didn’t want, because there were no features to fish to.

Since I was on this side of the lake, both tip rods stayed in the bag, so I could concentrate on the pole, fishing 6m with caster/maggot, 13m feeding mostly 3mm’s and 13m to my right where I could fish towards a willow tree that extended 8/9m out into the lake. I also set up a rig for the margins, but without any cover close by I never had a bite, although bank walkers didn’t help.

The 13m line was fed with ½ a cup of 3mms with some Gimps gold, a few 4mms and corn. Whilst a bigger cup was dumped towards the willow tree. The intention was to feed little & often at 13m and dump feed to my right.

Started at 6m with maggot, feeding caster, but it was 10mins before I caught a small roach and by 50min I had 11 fish for about 1½lb, which was really slow going. I had already topped up my 13m line and started catching immediately on soft pellet. Mainly hand size skimmers, but a big bream was very welcome, this was followed by more skimmers, before I had 2 more proper bream.

Whenever I had a quiet spell I would switch to the RH swim, which only produced small fish – I had hoped to pull in a few better bream, tench or carp on this line, but it never happened. I had kept the 6m line topped up, but it simply didn’t happen so it was abandoned.

At the half way stage, it was obvious that Andy behind me would win as he continually caught skimmers from the “flyer”. The grapevine, also suggested Roger had caught a few carp again from the right side of the island. As for my part of the lake, Graham on the opposite bank was making use of his end peg, fishing long down his margin and Ian on the 1st peg over the bridge also had a few.

The fish now were getting finicky and I had to keep rotating baits, between pellet, double maggot & worm to keep the fish coming. The 13m line died completely, so I started toss potting 3mm’s at 13.5m, but fishing at 14.5m and this resulted in more hand size skimmers right to the final whistle.

Unfortunately the complete lack of wind meant the lake was flat calm and as we know those skimmers do like a bit of ripple above their heads.

In the end was pleased with how I fished and it came as no surprise that 1 & 2nd came from the right side of the lake.

1st 40-4 – Andy (bream/skimmers - pole/pellet)
2nd 27-0 – Roger (carp/bream - method)
3rd 19-10 - Ken