The good news is that I have managed to get match winner Chris Nicholls to write a blog, and here it is.
Sunday brought a welcome return for me to Ribbon Lake at Sumners Ponds http://www.sumnersponds.co.uk/ a venue I'm quite fond of as it's mixed silvers fishing with not a carp in sight, it's also been quite kind to me to date with a fair bit of success there. The match was a Match Fishing Scene event being made up from members of the MFS forum so I got to meet a few people I had chatted with online but had never actually met too - that was a nice bonus. On the day Dave 'Pikey' Pearson was sadly ill and couldn't make it so Rick Baxter ran the match taking up the reigns at the last minute so a big well done to Rick. Ribbon is
only a small lake so numbers had been restricted to 16 anglers, any more than that and you have to start pegging some of the real narrow parts and sport there is never very good - Rick made a decent job of the pegging though and everybody had either a bit of room or a peg in one of the noted areas. I drew peg 2 which was at the right hand end as you look from the car park, a decent enough area but not usually good enough to win from as a rule, the favoured areas are the wides and the bridge pegs - but the big difference today was the wind, it was blowing strongly but from my end of the lake down to the other so at least I had a bit of shelter, it was a bit swirly though and fishing long, either 11.5 metres or 13 metres, was a handful at times and I quite often had to let the pole go with the wind rather than hold it and risk a break - as actually happened to Terry Swan. Due to the wind I had already decided to concentrate my efforts at 5 m
etres, a line that had produced well in the past, with another line at 11.5 metres. Tackle was a prototype float I have been working on with Nick Gilbert specifically for this sort of fishing in 0.4gm with an 0.104 Double Strength hook length to an 18 PR21, this was made up with a simple spread shot bulk and a No 10 dropper. Bait was 4mm expanders, a few micros, maggots and pinkies, I also had a bit of ground bait too, a mix of Sonubaits F1 and green Swim Stim - when the whistle went I fed a few micros and pinkies on each line and a grapesize ball of GB on each line - not much but it's pretty easy to overdo the feed at Ribbon in the winter. I baited up with a 4mm expander and dropped in on the 5m line, the depth on this line was exactly the same as the 11.5m line which was handy - a few minutes passed and I got my first bite, a small crucian,there are loads of these in Ribbon but they can be a bit finicky and really you need to get the skimmers and smallish tench in there as well to build a weight, I don't think you can rely on just crucians but if you catch them you know you're on the right lines and if skimmers and the tench come along you'll catch those too, as was the case for me. I carried on doing the same and after an hour or so I'd had a few crucians and a couple of skimmers with a few small roach too.I hadn't seen very much caught, no doubt due to the poor windy conditions so decided to carry on as I was despite it not being actually that good - a look on my long lines never even provided a bite so I decided to feed it again and go back to the 5m line - that gave me a few more fish and the fishing on the lake generally hadn't improved. I had a few looks on the long line and nicked the odd fish here and there but it was hard work with the wind to hold the pole still enough, a shame really as the float worked perfectly but every now and again the pole would get whipped round and the float would fly out of the water - so, it was case of keep rotating between my lines looking for bites and add the odd fish to the net.I ended up weighing in 9lb 7oz of crucians, skimmers, roach and a couple of the 12oz-14oz tench for a win, 2nd was jaap stam (Martyn Dwayne) with 8-1-0 and 3rd was Shedful (Dave Speller) with 7-15-0 from their pegs either side of the bridge at the far end of the lake.Thanks Chris - No idea where I am next weekend but fear not I'll find another guest blogger if I don't get out on the bank.
