16/06/11 - Rood Ashton

Weight – 48lb 8oz
Catch – 14 Carp
Weather – Heavy thunder to start, later bright and calm
Match – Wiltshire Angling Evening Open – 3rd out of 8

There should have been at least 10 fishing today, but Mark trapped a nerve in his back, so at least that gave someone else a chance to win. Gary Etheridge was expecting Terry Fell to pick him up at 4.15. At 4.45 Gary calls up saying Terry hasn’t turned up so can’t go. Transpires Terry thought he had to pick Gary up at 5.15, which is a bit odd since the draw is 5pm! Terry did eventually turn up and we put the start time back 15mins to 6pm.

Unfortunately we can no longer drive around the lake to our pegs, so only the left bank was pegged. I drew 2, which I was happy about and decided to fish at 13m and down to my left next to the tree.

As 6pm approached the clouds became darker and the all in was met with a flash of lighting and massive clap of thunder. Well I didn’t fancy fishing 13m of pole, so started next to the tree and caught a small carp almost straight away, but rain was now really hammering down, which also included some hail.

20mins later the storm moved away and I could start fishing properly and an hour later I had 6 carp from my 13m line. I had been regularly feeding a pouch of 6mm pellet, which certainly brought the fish in, but the ripple disappeared and it became very bright. Now I couldn’t catch, it was if the fish just disappeared. In the meantime I could see Pete 2 pegs down now catching regularly, because he still had some ripple to fish to and Darren to my right was getting closer and closer to the reeds in an attempt to catch, but he was struggling to keep hold as the carp made their way into the snags.

After a very dodgy hour the sun had dropped a little and I started to catch again, but the fish weren’t really having it. I had tried down by the tree later on, but despite continually feeding never had a fish, so had to concentrate on the 13m line.

I’m convinced I would have caught much more had I had some ripple to fish into, because it was noticeable I struggled more when it was flat calm and I fed 5pts of pellet to get the carp feeding properly, so a bit disappointed to only finish 3rd. Darren and Terry either side of me did not weigh.

1st 66- 4 Tony Gilbert
2nd 64- 8 Pete (Wiltshire Angling)
3rd 48- 8 Ken Rayner
4th 46-8 Steve Martin