02/12/12 - Lands End - Match

Weight - 17lb 14oz (6lb 12oz - silvers)
Catch - 2 Carp, 10 Roach, 6 Perch, 1 Bream
Weather - Sunny start, rain later
Match - Open - 8th out of 13 overall (3rd - silvers)

With 13 today, we were all on Match Lake. There was talk of more people booking in and using 1 side of speci lake, but the issue with that is if you fish one side of speci they will move to the other side. 

I was expecting it to fish better than yesterday, because the fish would have a less space to hid away, however it was peg 17 again for me. Unbelievable! At least I could use the same rigs as yesterday and my top kits were already marked with the depth. I did set up an additional rig to fish corn by the platform of p16, hoping to pull some carp away from the bush on p17, but never had a bite.

I decided to feed more positively with caster to my left, but kept with the frugal feeding at the bottom of the shelf in front of me.

Whilst the final weight is almost identical to yesterday it all happened in reverse. My first fish was an 1oz roach after 90mins. Tom in the meantime already had 5-6 carp on p17 mostly from the bush. The grapevine also suggested that Adrian on p1, Rod on p3 and Mark on p22 were catching.

As the match progressed I started catching a few fish from the bottom of the far shelf, either on maggot or pinkie, including a very useful 2.5lb skimmer. My positively fed LH swim didn't produce, whilst I had pinging pellet to my right, but this only produced small roach.

I had also been feeding caster/maggot under the platform of p18, which immediately produced a good perch, then the hook pulled out of the next. After that I only had a couple of small ones, before it died completely.

With only a couple of hours left it became obvious I needed to concentrate on the silvers and the only swim where I was getting regular bites was at the bottom of the far shelf. I did try on top of the shelf, but never had a bite. It was just a case of being patient and waiting for a bite, so it was really annoying when I pulled out of 2 good fish.

As always seems to be the way, when you make a decision to concentrate on the silvers, up pops a couple of carp. I knew I was falling behind Andy on p20 in the silvers who was catching skimmers, but I was hoping to at least pick up 2nd in silvers. As it happened I did pick in the silvers albeit by default, but that's 6 picks up from the last 7 matches.

1st 74- 4 - Adrian Jeffrey - p1
2nd 70- 8 - Mark Poppleton - p22
3rd 50- 0 - Rod Wootton - p3
4th 34- 8 - Tom Mangnall - p15
5th 30-12 - Nick Merry - p13
6th 27-15 - Andy Hembrow - p20

Silvers
1st 15- 9 - Andy Hembrow - p20
2nd 8- 8 - Mark Poppleton - p22
3rd 6-12 - Ken Rayner - p17