Steve Gardener's Silver Fish League - Round 3

Wednesday morning brought a stark reminder that day time rain and overnight temperatures of minus 4 are not a great recipe for safe driving the following morning ! At 8am when we should
have been drawing at Sumners Pond, I was still sitting in my lounge as Don's journey was being blighted by accidents and closed roads.

When he finally arrived, we managed to get a couple of miles down the road and the Police closed the road right in front of us and we then sat stationary for 20 minutes before starting off again. We were expecting to find the remnants of an accident there but there was nothing !

Arriving at Sumners, the rest of the field were already breaking out their frozen pegs and after finding out where we'd drawn, we popped into the cabin for the most important part of the day....................breakfast ! With the start put back to 11 o'clock we still had time to grab a bite to eat and have a chat with Simon before making our way round the lake to our pegs as a decent breakfast always sets you up for the day, especially in winter.

I'd been drawn Peg 17 in my absence, with a flier either side ! Dave Bacon drew the end peg on the point to my left and Dave Sandford drew the bush peg to my right so I was likely to have one of those "Wimbledon Tennis matches" where you keep looking either way when you hear a fish splash ! The ice wasn't too thick and I was able to cut it with my new ice cutter - this involves a weed cutter attached to the top 4 section of an old telescopic pole that I discovered in the loft, this then fits on to the 5th section of my H10 pole and Bob's your uncle. With the thickness of the ice, I had to tape up the H10 joints or I have ended up with some sections being pulled out but I soon had a beautifully clean ice hole with very little floating ice to clean up.

I set up my usual silvers rigs, Drennan Lake floats on 0.12 G Line with 0.10 hooklength with a size 20 T213 hook. The only bait to fish for the skimmers is pellet and on the whistle I cupped in six or seven 4mm pellets on two different lines, both at about 12 metres. I then sat biteless for 20 minutes before I had my first skimmer of about 6 ounces. No more followed in the next hour which was disappointing as Dave Bacon to my left was catching skimmers, Dave Sandford was catching roach, perch and chub by his bush and I was getting neck ache from watching them both. By this time, I was clearly not going to do any good so had a little spell of fishing maggott for roach, however, even that was quite slow and the roach were tiny. After a couple of "Walks", I eventually arrived back at my peg with 75 minutes remaining and with the sky getting darker and rain imminent I was in two minds whether to pack up or not. I had prior to my last walk cupped in some bait on a longer line now that some of the ice had melted and thought I'd just have a look over it before putting my gear away. First put in with a 4mm expander that I'd nicked from Don earlier, the float dipped and I'd soon doubled my weight as a pound skimmer hit the net. In the next hour I added a few more skimmers and a 3lb bream and finished the match with 11-4-0 to finish half way in the match. I was gutted that I hadn't caught earlier but it wasn't as though I had done anything different as the fish just seemed to turn up. In hindsight, I'm now convinced that my major error was to cut out the peg with my weed cutter instead of throwing in an ice breaker that would have stirred up the bottom as well. Dorking skipper Steve Sanders was the only other person not to use an ice breaker and he only had 10lb which is a lot less that he usually catches.

Result

Chris Love 38-0-0
Steve Gardener 29-12-0
Dave Bacon 26-9-8
Dave Lewis 26-0-0
Donald Garnish 20-0-0
Terry Harrison 19-3-0
Mick Keeper 17-6-0
John Holt 17-4-0
Dave Sandford 16-2-0
Geoff Vallance 13-2-0
Dave Pearson 11-4-0
Steve Sanders 10-14-0
Adam Lee 10-4-0
Brian Wharton 8-13-0
Mark Sandford 7-2-0
Rob Draisey 6-10-0
Terry Maddox 5-12-0
Jim McDowell 3-10-0

Despite personally having a frustrating match, I think you'll agree that they are a superb set of weights for a silvers match in the depths of winter. I think I might be there for the next couple of wednesdays but first I have Round 4 of the Willinghurst Masters on Sunday, where hopefully I will improve on my record of 1 fish in the first three rounds.