27/08/12 - Lands End - Speci

Weight - 83lb 2oz
Catch - 12 Carp, 4 Bream, 3 F1, 3 Perch, 2 Roach
Weather - Cloudy, windy and showery
Match - Gary Wall Memorial - 9th out of 21 (4th out of 10 - lake)

The draw today was quite entertaining with Tom Thick as usual at the centre of much of the melay, but all good natured banter. It was good to see Tim Ford back and as he says he was just pleased be out fishing. It was also good to see Rod Wootton back after his spell in hospital and Mike Etheridge who I hadn't seen for ages, spending most of his time at Ivy House - why?

Being Gary's memorial match, a minutes silence was impeccably observed, although with Gary, swearing for the full minute may have been more appropriate.

With 22 booked in and 1 no show, Tony decided to let fate decide which peg would be left out and it turned out to be peg 15, giving Tom on peg 18 loads of space. As for me I was on 25 - Speci, which I was happy enough with. The weather forecast for today was horrendous, but fortunately the strong southerly wind was from behind, so no side ways wind to contend with.

For company I had Phil Harding on 26 and Paul Elmes on 40 opposite. As is usual the wind really kicked in on the all-in, although the rain wasn't as bad as expected, but we still had some heavy downpours.

My plan of attack was 4mm pellet and a few bits of meat regularly fed at 6m (which seemed to work on Wednesday) and a pouchful of 6s every 10mins over the 14.5m line in open water. I started down the left hand bank, originally on 8mm pellet, but that didn't work so switched to double caster. The margin down that bank is quite deep (3ft) and to avoid foul hookers I cupped in bait to get the fish on the deck. This seemed to work, but it was slow going with only a couple of carp, perch and F1s. After 2hrs Phil decided to go for a walk, because he was struggling to catch on pellet shallow and in the wind was finding it hard going at 17m to the point of the island. Paul opposite was also struggling, so I felt it was just a case of catch what you can, but I was surprised at the lack of small fish activity.

Phil had enough and went home after 3hrs. I had managed another carp from the left hand bank, plus a couple of big skimmers from my short line on 4mm expander. By this time Paul's swims kicked into life and he was catching down both margins.

So far I had left my long line alone and first put in with paste resulted in a carp. I kept catching over the next couple of hours, occasionally rotating my short line and left hand bank. On the long line I switched from catapulting bait to toss potting it with the paste. In hindsight this was a mistake, because I was still catching, including a big F1 and skimmers, but I would have periods when I would get loads of silly indications. When I went back to catapulting a pouch, sometimes 2, I started to get proper bites again. Unfortunately, I realised this 15-20mins too late, because I only needed another 9lb to sneak into 6th and some money. More ifs, buts and maybes.

Overall Speci Lake fished well and the fish seem to be spread out at the moment. Mike won our lake with 140-12 from p29,  with Paul Elmes 2nd with 89-2 and Martin Pettifer 3rd with 84-5. So all very close in the end.

1st 197-13 - Tom Thick - p18
2nd 140-12 - Mike West - p29
3rd 129- 9 - Craig Edmunds - p19
4th 128- 4 - Tom Mangnal - p21
5th 108- 4 - Rod Wootton - p3
6th 92- 5 - Allan Oram - p13

Silvers
1st 40- 1 - Tom Mangnal - p21
2nd 31- 8 - Nigel Bartlett - p38
3rd 28-12 - Mike Etheridge - p5
4th 18- 8 - Ken Rayner - p25