I just love it when people I know do well in match fishing and then give me a little write up for my blog. Todays Guest Blogger is none other than Tony Curd who won the latest Fisho qualifier at Lakeview and will be appearing in the final later this summer. Good Luck in the final Tony and thanks for the insight into your day.
Having heared all the rumours about this particular fishery, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in being a little hesitant in making the long trip to Lakeview Fishery in Leicester however no matter how bad the venue is supposed to be there is a match to be won and a place in the final up for grabs. At the draw I paid the pools and pulled out peg 24 on Harbour, to my surprise Milo Bordon team mate Pemb Wrighting had drawn 23 next to me, It always surprises me how you can travel 130 miles and draw next to your mates out of 130 anglers ! Our pegs were in a narrow offshoot of the main Harbour Pool itself, 11 metres wide and quite shallow. I plumbed up 4 rigs, two for fishing across to the far bank which was generally all the same depth with one area next to some reeds being a bit deeper so I thought that would be a good area to target, the floats were 4x10 preston chianti’s on 0.12 line and white hydrolastic with a size 16 Milo T213 hook for fishing pellets with the option of maggots if the fishing was more difficult. The other rigs were at 6 metres down the middle in four feet of water where I would feed maggots and pellets throughout the day this rig was a 4x12 Chianti again and 0.12 line with the same 16 Milo T213 hook. The final rig was a margin rig at 6 metres to my right where I had some space this was on 0.14 line with a small Milo caster float, I planned to feed corn and pellets here for later in the day. As the hooter sounded for the start of the match I fed the bottom of a 250ml pot of 4mm fishery pellets down the edge and went immediately across with 10 4mm’s in the pot with a 4mm Dynamite expander on the hook it went under straight away and it was the same for Pemb, We caught a few steadily for the first 40 minutes fishing to the far bank but it soon slowed up, I decided to go onto my deeper far bank swim and carried on picking up the odd fish, the key was not to empty one line only catching one or two fish at a time before moving to another line, I took the decision to feed a bit heavier on my shallower line as the fish seemed to come immediately to the feed but this was a wrong move and I never actually had another bite off this line, with a line down I plumbed a new line tight under the grass to my left, and kinder potted in 10 pellets, and had a look down the edge with 2 hours to go, I caught a small F1 straight away but it wasn’t really happening. At this stage I was on around 24 fish. Going across to the new line under the grass I caught 3 fish immediately, all nice 12oz to 1lb 8oz mirrors. I left the line to rest and went onto the deeper one where I caught a 2lb mirror after 5 minutes – bonus fish ! With an hour to go Pemb had start to catch regularly and was pushing me all the way, So having spent a little longer fishing a bigger expander in the hope of picking up a few more 2lbers I went back to 4mm’s under the grass and started picking up a few more, I had one more fish in the last few minutes of the match, probably a pound fish so a nice finish to the day, I’d ended the day on 33 carp to 2lb. I wasn’t sure how I’d done, I thought I had 35-40lb but didn’t know how anyone else had caught as the fishery is so spread apart, early on I’d heared Neil Machin had caught a few so I expected him to do well. Pemb weighed first and put 44lb 12oz on the scales, I was next with my 46lb 4oz and back to the results I went ! As the results started coming back and rumours of a 50lb and Dave Swain still to weigh who had some big fish I thought maybe I’ll make the frame. Dave’s weight came back as 35lb and the 50lb turned out to not be true so it all started getting a bit nervy ! I don’t normally get nervous over a result but this is fish o mania, a different league all together ! Nigel Harrhy came out and said I had a very good chance of winning the match, as the results started to be read out things got tense, a 45lb a few 44lbs including pemb and some other 40lb weights came close, but I managed to hang on in there and actually win the match ! I couldn’t believe it and now I cannot wait for the final !
Tony Curd
