06/08/12 - Glebe - Pool 1

Weight - 128lb 4oz
Catch - 24 Carp, 3 Skimmers, 3 Perch
Weather - Showers, but mostly dry. Gusty Wind.
Match - MFS Float Only - 3rd out of 20

This was the last match before the Masters on Saturday and a final chance to refine any rigs etc.

On arrival there was a gentle breeze blowing down the lake into peg 30 and it looked like a draw in the 20s would be favourite and you definately didnt want to draw between 2-7. Well I got my wish with peg 23. Ian "Scone" Toplis drew 24, which he described as his favourite edge peg and he intended to spend most of the match edge dwelling. To my left on 21 was Andy Fox on his first visit to the Glebe, which he enjoyed.

Todays tactics was hopefully fairly simple - catch shallow on caster. The issue however was the weather, it was all over the place, which meant the fish really didnt want to know. We had flat calm conditions, then a strong wind, heavy rain, before going back to warm flat conditions.

I started on the shallow rig catching 2 fish, including my biggest Glebe fish of 12-12, within 30mins, but it was hard going. The fish were there, but they really didnt seem to be feeding properly. I even struggled on the waggler, which last time caught me a few fish.

After an hour I had an early look on my 5m line where I had been feeding 4s & 6s, but only had 1 small skimmer to show for my efforts, so back out on the shallow rig. After 2 hours, the jungle drums said that Mark on peg 14 had 10 carp. Both Nick on 20 and Andy had a couple carp, whilst I was up to 6.

The fishing proved difficult, it was a case of trying to mug a carp you could see milling around, but there was loads of time when the carp just shyed away from the bait. Speaking to Nick on the drive back, we both had the same issue, where you had to keep changing depth and how the bait was presented to keep the fish coming.

In the last hour the fish just seemed to completly disappear, so switched to my 5m line, where I had 3 small carp on paste, followed by a couple more shallow, before finishing down my margin were I had been feeding pellet and caught a 10lber on paste.

Sconey won from his favourite edge peg catching on 10mm JPZs over groundbait, whilst the 2nd place angler caught on paste, which meant I was the best of the shallow boys. Unfortunately for Herbie who was between these anglers had to leave early due to vandals causing some flooding at work.

1st 173- 0 - Ian "Scone" Toplis - p24
2nd 155- 4 - Covblaze - p27
3rd 128- 4 - Ken Rayner - p23
4th 116- 4 - Nick Merry - p20
5th 114- 8 - Mark Poppleton - p14
6th 111- 0 - Ross N - p1