12/11/11 - Lands End - Match

Weight – 42lb 14oz
Catch – 7 Carp, 6 Perch, 3 Roach, 2 Rudd, 1 Bream
Weather – Cold heavy overnight rain. Very mild, mostly bright & calm
Match – Open – 2nd out of 10

I haven’t intended to go fishing today, but decided to take advantage of the mild weather, before the frosts & cold kick in.

I found myself on peg 5, which has been very indifferent recently, so wasn’t sure what to expect, particularly after last night heavy rain, which did have an effect on the fishing.

Initially decided on 3 swims, micros 13m to my left, caster by the island and 4mm’s 13m to my right. Starting on the island I had a rudd straight away on double maggot, before switching to the RH 13m line after 5min with hair rigged 6mm pellet, which produced a 2lb skimmer, then a 5lb carp within 10mins. Unfortunately that was it for 50mins, despite a couple of liners.

After catapulting caster to the island I was hoping to pull in a few fish, so was disappointed to come back with a small roach, but the next put in I had another carp to join its mate in the net, followed by a couple of decent perch before that line went dead.

Just as I wondering what to try next a carp was slurping on the surface about 5m out. I dropped double caster on its nose and it took it! At 10lb it was certainly a big bonus, on what was proving to be a difficult day. Only Martin Pettifer on peg 19 seemed to be catching and Mike West on peg 11 was already going for walk, because he had yet to catch!

I had kept catapulting 4mms to my RH 13m line and had 4 carp in a hour on corn, before that line dried up. In the meantime I had kept trickling bait into the LH 13m swim, as well as caster by the peg 6 platform, but both swims failed to produce anything of consequence. So moving into the last 90mins I concentrated on the island and the RH 13m line. The island produced a couple of quality perch on caster and a carp on JPZ pellet, but the carp just won’t settle in the shallow water by the island. The RH 13m line only produced 1 more carp.

Overall a difficult day, when I had to continually rotate swims, although I may have overfed a couple of my swims, underestimating how cold the water was. In fact only Martin Pettifer and I caught carp today, so last night’s rain definitely did its damage. However really pleased to have done so well from what has been recently a very average peg.

1st 48- 4 – Martin Pettifer – p19
2nd 42-14 – Ken Rayner – p5
3rd 25- 8 – Nigel Bartlett – p15 (all silvers – mostly roach)
4th 13- 8 0 Dave Wescott – p21 (all silvers)