20/08/11 - Glebe - Mallory Park

Weight – 8lb 2oz
Catch – 13 Perch, 5 Roach, 1 Skimmer, 1 Gudgeon
Weather – Windy, sunny start, drizzle later, before the sun returned
Match – Angling Trust Masters

Writing this blog the day after the match and I have just received a text from Mark making sure I haven’t topped myself! In all seriousness though I had a nightmare of a match.

I’ve been looking forward to today for a while, confident with our plan of attack and just needed a draw. There were 16 teams of 6, including Drennan Team England, Guru, Shakespeare, Bag ‘Em, spread across the whole of the Glebe complex, including Foundation Lake and Mallory Parks Big Lake.

Mark & I travelled up the night before so we can be fresh for the morning, staying overnight at a Premier Inn, unfortunately Marks snoring made sure I didn’t get much sleep and I needed a couple of red bulls!

At the draw, the 1 lake no-one wanted was Mallory Park’s Big Lake, since it is in the middle of the race track and there was going to be a motorcycle track day, which meant it was going to be noisy. The other issue was the Big Lake isn’t fished that often, even by the Glebe club members, so getting up to date information was difficult.

Unfortunately I found myself on the Big Lake and I couldn’t work out the pegging. I was 6th in a line of 8 pegs, before there was a gap of 3 before the next 3, which left every other peg in on the far side and loads of space. From what little information I gleaned the stocking density was similar to pool 1, i.e. loads of carp, that can be caught short as well as on the feeder (although speaking to Roy Marlow he said everything worked – so not very helpful), plus a match last week the lowest weight was 74lb.

Mark & I had discussed on the drive up that if we drew the Big Lake that we would still fish caster, initially starting on the deck and go from there, aiming to catch shallow. However, when I arrived at my peg there was a strong south westerly breeze blowing at me left to right, which meant fishing caster shallow wasn’t practical, plus fishing longer than 11m was difficult.

The only issue I had was I lost my bag of feeders, although I found some method feeders (which are banned) and 1 cage feeder, however I decided against using the feeder, settling to fish the margins, 11m with caster and pellet waggler/lead at 30m (I couldn’t feed any longer due to the wind).

Since as the word states, this is a big open lake and with the wind i needed a 0.8g float in the 4ft deep swim to hold bottom in the tow. On the all in I dumped a full cup of caster, with a pinch of hemp and corn. I was soon into fish, but they were mainly perch and I kept potting bait every 10mins or so in an effort to pull in the carp that were supposed to come short. By the half way stage was I falling behind those around me, simply because I couldn’t get a carp on any method.

I had been feeding 8mm continually, but a look on the pellet waggler (set at 2 different depths) and the lead proven fruitless. From what I could see I was the only 1 without a carp. I could have stuck with fishing at 11m but catching silvers wasn’t going to do me any favours. I kept feeding the 11mm line heavily, as well feeding the 30m line hoping the carp would turn up. I also started feeding my margins again heavily with caster, hemp & corn.

By the end of the match, I had feed 10pts of caster, 9pts of 8mm, 2pts of hemp and 2 large tins of corn, but those carp simply didn’t come in. With all the 8mm I had fed at 30m I would have expected some carp to have turned up late, but other than 2 carp that I pulled out of one of which was at the net, very little showed. The anglers either side had 20 & 25lb, whilst the winner Paul Yates (Team England) from the end peg with 90lb and 2nd was Phil Ringer (Guru) from the far side.

A good indication that there were no carp in the area was a Grebe than stayed in an around my swim all day, popping up with roach in its mouth most times it surfaced.

As a team we finished a creditable 6th with Mark winning his section, finishing 2nd overall with 159lb from pool 4, fishing caster shallow, Nick Merry won his section from pool 7, fishing caster shallow, whilst Tim Shuttle was 3rd from pool 2.

I’m gutted to have done so badly. In hindsight today caster wasn’t the right approach for this lake due to the high number of silvers and I would have been better off fishing the feeder. Having said that I had hoped to pull in some carp with the amount of food that I fed and as for catching short, no one did.

Can’t wait for the next match to get this 1 out of my system.