21/02/10 - Lands End - Speci Lake

Weight – 13lb 8oz
Catch – 20 Perch, 17 Roach
Weather – Bright & sunny.
Water Temp – 5.0c > 5.0c
Match – Lands End Winter League – rd 5 - 31st overall, 4th in section, 2nd Silvers overall

With more cold weather forecast another difficult day was expected, although come the morning of the match the frost had stayed away and it was a pleasant, almost warm day.

The 5th round of the winter league meant we were back to a random draw and I needed a decent peg to maintain a challenge for the top 7, unfortunately peg 36 on speci was far from ideal. The last 3 matches has only seen a top weight of 8lb and during this series the most anyone has managed is 3pts (out of 6). It was also in the middle of a tough section, with Tony Rixon on 33, Bela Bakos on current flyer of 34, Mike West on 39 and Andy France on 40. So a section of carp baggers and I was unlikely to see 1. I told Jason Radford on 37 we would be fighting for bottom of section.

With little prospect of winning from the peg, damage limitation was the order of the day, which meant a day silver fish hunting and hope the form pegs blew out, particularly since the water was still very cold.

Decided on 2 swims, 13m at the bottom of the shelf and the top of the shelf, so a pinch of micros & caster was deposited at 13m and I went straight over to the island hoping for a rogue carp. After 20mins it was obvious there were none around, so time to start my assault on the silvers.

After cupping a few casters with some worm atomic “kitten” cloud by the left hand bush, I went over my 13m line, but no bites, meant a switch the far side, but it was a further 10mins before I could get a fish. I had to ditch the LH bush after snagging on roots a couple of times and swapped to the RH bush which seemed to be a bit clearer. For the next hour or so I caught mostly Perch up to 1½lb on caster or maggot, toss potting 4-6 bits of caster every put in.

By the halfway stage I had 20 fish, but the swim was dying. Tony was comfortably winning the section, but Bela was struggling. It appeared the carp had moved off the island into the deeper water. I thought I was just ahead of Jason, but I couldn’t see how Mike and Andy were doing.

Whilst fishing to the island I kept the 13m swim topped with a small amount of micros and caster, hoping for a few skimmers or F1s to put in appearance, but they never did, managing only small roach and a single perch. I did try another “down the track swim” just feeding caster, but this also proved fruitless. I kept the caster going into the RH bush and periodically tried other areas along the island picking up the odd fish.

To get bites I had to dot the float (roach 4x10) right down and even then they were only little dinks. I tried showing more bristle but couldn’t get a proper bite. The real frustration was the number of perch that dropped off the hook. 9 in total.

Come the end of the match, I managed to beat Jason & Mike and was only a 1lb away from Andy who had 11lb of silvers, plus a small carp. Tony caught all day for 133lb, whist Bela was left wondering what if, although he did manage 3 carp & 2nd section.

Getting 3 points was probably the best I could hope for unless a few carp put in an appearance, but at least I picked up top silvers weight on the lake (and 2nd overall). Individually I’ve dropped from 6th to 8th so not too bad, but with 3 rounds left I could really do with a couple of decent draws.

1-Nicky Collier - 29pts
2-Vince Shipp - 27
3-Dave Hodgson - 25
4-Garry Wall 24
5-Mat Tomes 23 (236-5)
6-Martin Pettifer 23 (136-1)
7-Rod Wootton 22 (190-1)
8-Ken Rayner 22 (122-15)
9-James Wither 21 (155-8)
10-Larry Burns 21 (135-11 )