24/06/12 - Berkley Lake

Weight - 82lb 8oz
Catch - 39 Carp
Weather - Heavy overnight rain, cloudy start, sunny later, but windy.
Water Temp - 20.9c > 22.1c
Match - Wests Tackle Open - 1st out of 14

After last weeks performance I needed this result! I also don't think it was any co-incidence that this co-incidened with me finally passing a financial services exam at the 4th attempt. Sue is very happy about this, because apparently I've been very grumpy recently. It is amazing though, the relief of passing the exam, just meant I felt more relaxed, which whilst I don't wish to make excuses for my recent poor performances, being overly stressed does reflect in your fishing.

Berkley Lake is an estate lake near Frome run my Warminister AC. The lake has 27 pegs running along 1 bank, which runs east to west, so any prevailing westerlies will mean a side ways wind for most. Speaking to Mark he reckoned 70-100lb would be needed to frame, with most fish being caught at 6m on paste. That sounded simple enough, but on arrival at the water level was about 18ins above normal and the last match they fished here when the level was up was won with about 40lb.

The lake is in an area of clay, so any excess water doesnt drain away, so after the recent rain it didn't take much for the lake to fill up. Being clay also meant the bank was rather sticky! which after the walk from the car park to the lake (across a field and though the woods) meant you felt the pain.

I drew peg 3, which was at the narrower far end of the lake where the wind was blowing. For company I had Hippy on peg 2 who won the last match, so at least I could keep an eye on him to gauge how I was doing, because the only other person I could see was Steve on peg 4 to my right.

The wind was certainly blowing down, fortunately the lake dog legged slightly which meant I was slightly sheltered mainly due to some trees, but even fishing
at 6m the rig was still being blown about.

As instructed I set up a paste rig to fish 6m, I also set up a 0.5g HB dweezil to fish 8mm pellet over the paste line, a paste rig for the margin (which never produced) and finally a pellet waggler. (I also brought a method feeder, but never needed it).

Because nobody knew how it would fish I decided to start off cautiously, so only fed 3x 8s and a pinch of 6s via a toss pot with my paste. After an hour I had 8 carp. I did try the pellet rig, but this produced 2x 8oz carp and was never used again. I struck with the paste for another 15mins but it really slowed down.

In the meantime I had kept feeding 8s towards the trees opposite, although the wind made sure some of the pellet was occasionally spread out a bit. A purple patch saw me catch nearly every cast, so after about 2.5hrs I was up 25 carp.

The rest of the match was a case of rotating swims, as well as rotating hooklengths, but I kept going back to my original 8ins, which seemed to be best in the wind. Towards the end of the match bank walkers suggested I was leading and in the end I won quite comfortably, just a shame England couldn't follow my example. Another lose on penalties, but to be fair the Italians deserved to win.

1st 82- 8 - Ken Rayner
2nd 46- 0 - Mark Poppleton
3rd 39- 0 - Craig Knight