16/04/11 - Lands End - Match Lake

Weight –40lb 12oz
Catch – 24 Perch, 7 Skimmers, 3 Carp, 2 Ide, 2 Rudd, 1 Tench, 1 F1, 1 Roach
Weather – Warm & mostly sunny
Match – Open – 9th (out of 10)

Thursday was my exam, which was computer based at the City of Bristol College in the centre of town. However, I started to get concerned, when 5 minutes before it was due to start, we still weren’t logged in to the system. An IT/student type turned up to say the servers are down! Needless to say no one was happy, which lead to one woman starting on this poor kid, demanding it be sorted. As we all know, if the problem is IT related, no amount of stamping your feet will change the situation. I rang the CII (Chartered Institute of Insurers) who confirmed they would re-arrange, which fortunately they did before Easter. However it still means more revision to keep the knowledge fresh.

I had hoped to fish on Sunday for Tony’s open, which would be spread over 3 lakes, however I left it too late to book in, so decided to fish today instead.

Its not often you catch nearly 41lb at Lands End and come close to last. I actually had an enjoyable day, even if it was a little frustrating in the last couple of hours.

Peg 7 isn’t my favourite peg, but apparently it had shown some recent form, with 35lb of silvers coming from it last week. At the start fed 4mm & some corn at 13m to my left at the bottom of the shelf and caster on top of the shelf in front of me. Whilst I let that settle, I went straight under the platform of peg 8 fishing paste hoping for a few early mug carp. 2nd put in I had a 3lb tench and then 3rd put in a near 3lb F1 was netted, but no carp.

I wanted to let the LH 13m line settle a bit longer, so switched to fishing the far side on caster where I caught all my perch, but it was noticeable throughout the day I couldn’t catch more than 4 or 5 fish before it went quiet, but whenever I went back to the swim I usually caught a bigger fish.

Having left the LH 13m swim to settle for an hour, which included a couple of top ups I caught skimmers over the next 90mins (whilst rotating with the far bank swim)on soft pellet or corn. At the half way stage, I only had 1 carp with most being caught on the other side of the lake, so I made the decision to stick with the silvers.

Having made that decision, I was now struggling to catch other than on caster from the far side. I couldn’t catch over my LH 13m line, it seemed the carp had invaded, but they weren’t feeding, just sitting over the top, which unsettled the skimmers. My problem was that I was too far behind in the carp race and I felt I was slipping behind Mike on peg 11 with the silvers. Mike was also struggling to catch carp, but was instead catching skimmers & tench on pellet.

I had been feeding 4mm pellet from the start at 14.5m to my right at the bottom of the shelf hoping to catch carp later in the match, but I never had a bite, which I really couldn’t understand.

The far bank swim was the most productive and I noticed a few carp moving long the shelf, but they weren’t taking the double caster, so switched to hair rigged 6mm, feeding pellet further towards the point of the island and my 1st fish was a big Ide and I still couldn’t hook a carp (other than foul hooking).

I could have set-up a 5m swim, but didn’t have enough caster to make that effective and I didn’t want to spread too much pellet all over the swim.

Those last couple of hours were frustrating, losing 4 fish on the bounce, including a couple of big perch and since I was struggling to catch anymore silvers and my 14.5m RH swim wasn’t working, I went back down under the p8 platform with paste and promptly had 2 carp in the last 15mins.

I had approached the peg initially looking for carp, but caught silvers. A further change to catch silvers resulted in a carp. Another switch to pellet, produced an Ide. It just seemed that today I would make a decision which would have the opposite expected result.

I finished with 22-12of silvers, but didn’t get close to Barry Fitchews 40lb which included a lot of small fish on caster.

1st – 130- 7 Rod Wootton - peg 15
2nd – 126-0 Tom Magnol – peg 21
3rd – 108-2 Leyton Palmer- peg 19

Top silvers
1st – 40- 0 Barry Fitchew – peg 1
2nd – 30-13 Mike West –peg 11