Sumners Pond - Ribbon Lake

For some unknown reason, our planned match on the Middle Lake at Willow Park was called off (I think we were told that the car park was unsafe due to all the snow !) and with the Silvers Lake and the Match lake at Sumners pond being booked by clubs, Simon (at Sumners) kindly offered to let us fish his new silvers lake. Even better news was that as the lake had never been fished before and nobody quite knew what to expect, Simon very generously offered to only charge us £5 day ticket and donate the proceeds to Charity - Thank You Simon you are a true gent.

The new lake isn't quite ready for regular match fishing yet as it still needs a couple of bridges across to the islands to create a few more pegs, and with 21 fishing today, we didn't really have as much room as we would have liked. At the draw nobody knew what would be a good or bad draw, so when I drew Peg 14, all I knew was that it was at the far end of the lake and my quiet days fishing was out of the window as I had Terry Molloy at the next peg !

With the lake frozen, I decided to fish one line out to the point of the island at about 14 metres and one line at 6 metres at about 2 o'clock. Both rigs were 0.12/0.10 with drennan lake floats, one 0.40 and one 0.60, hooks were size 18 B510's. The depth on both lines was the same at about 5 foot and I thought I'd catch there rather than the deeper water (about 8 foot) at about 10 metres. Marcus Page, my regular ice breaker very kindly had three chucks with his breaker to help clear the peg and I then set about moving the sheets of ice out of the peg with the use of my weed cutter on the end of my old pole.

By 11 o'clock we were all ready to start and I began fishing long whilst feeding a few maggotts on the shorter line. Apparently we were fishing for roach, chub, crucians and tench but with the weather being so cold I thought it was likely to be a chub and roach match so maggott was my first choice of bait despite the fish being fed daily on 4mm pelletts. The match started slowly for everyone but at our end of the lake we all started to catch a few chub between 2 and 3 ounces.

Although I was getting the odd fish, I really needed to catch closer as it would be much quicker than keep shipping 14 metres of pole in and out all day. I soon came in on the 6 metre line and by feeding 8-10 maggotts every put in, I was soon catching small chub regularly. Tony Yianni, Terry Molloy and Don were all catching well but as they were all fishing long, I knew that I was catching as well, if not quicker than them.

Every time the inside line slowed I switched to the long line which I had been feeding by catapult and caught a few chub there before switching back again. This pattern continued until the last hour or so when the chub disappeared and I started to catch the odd roach but I did have to wait quite a while between bites. With the weather taking a turn for the worse and it getting colder and colder we came to a unanimous decision to finish at 3.30 instead of 4pm. As Terry called the "All Out" I was just swinging in my final fish and although the general concensus of opinion was that Tony Yianni and Don were going to finish first and second, I had a feeling that I might just have pipped them both.

Result

Dave Pearson 11-0-0
Tony Yianni 10-9-0
Terry Molloy 9-11-0
Mick Keeper 8-12-0
Donald Garnish 8-3-0
Terry Harrison 6-12-0

So, having blanked last sunday and not fished on wednesday I had a much better day today, plenty of bites, £125 in the old sky rocket, £107 donated to the Rainbow Trust Children's Charity and also Jonathan Watt gave me 4 tins of catfood for Wildlife Aid to help feed their hedgehogs !

This match fishing isn't so bad after all !

Wednesday sees me back at Sumners for Round 3 of Steve Gardener's Silver fish league on the Silver fish lake (which I don't usually catch on !) so, see you all on Thursday when I will give a report on the days action.