Another Match Fishing Scene match and another new venue to me so I was really looking forward to it. Hathers did the chauffeuring honours this time and by 9am we'd parked up, I'd consumed a bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee and we were ready for the draw.
Despite having never fished the lake before, my pre draw wander revealed the following pegs as my preferred choices. Pegs 1,21 and 28 - all end pegs with nice reed or lilly lined corners to fish in to. Pegs 5,7,23,25, Peg 17 had an island chuck and a load of room and Peg 13 was right down the end of an arm on it's own with the wind blowing down there.
So, with all those pegs I fancied, where did I draw..Peg 24 ! Which to be fair looked ok and with my section consisting of Shedders, Tom (from the Island), Rick, Herbie, me and Greenie, this looked like an easy £50 and 6 more Champions League points in the bag !
Oh I nearly forgot, match organiser Sparky drew Peg 1, (see left) widely renowned as the best peg in the South of England - I'm saying nothing ! But just look at that corner with all the rushes in.
My plan of attack was to fish the lead out between the islands in Herbies and Greenies pegs, switching between an 8mm pellet and a conker (paste wrapped round an 8mm pellet) whilst pinging a few 8mm's over the top. I was thinking of doing that for the 1st couple of hours and when I'd had 10 or so carp, I'd probably switch to the long pole and pellet to add a few more before plundering the edge in the last hour and a half. It sounded good to me but unfortunately things didn't quite go to plan !
I had to share my lead line with Nick D opposite which was likely to be a pain but to be fair he only had a couple of chucks on the method so I actually had that line to myself for most of the match, although despite an odd liner from fish up in the water, I never had a bite on the lead, the long pole produced just as effective as I never had a bite there either but as Rick was catching shortish on the pole I fed a shorter line with dead maggots and tried there. The match started slowly for most with only the fancied pegs producing (and Rick on Peg 26) but then a load of carp started to show on top to the left of Herbies peg and for those of you who know the old boy, one thing he loves to do is fish the Pellet waggler. I'm not sure he was too worried about whose peg he was casting in but he was soon catching well whilst I was still looking at a motionless float.
To cut a long story short, I caught a few silvers fishing for carp with 4 magotts on a size 14 hook, caught 3 carp on the 8 metre line and lost 4 foulhookers (as did a lot of people fishing the pole) as the fish seemed to want to come over the feed but not eat it !
So, at the weigh in, I made my way along with the scales to take a few snaps and the most obvious thing was the trouble most anglers had trying to bend down so I could get them and their catch in the photo. Anyway here are the results and pictures of some of the framers.
RESULT
Sparky............Peg 1..........65-6-0
JWB................Peg 5..........45-8-0
Herbie............Peg 25........44-8-0
Shedfull..........Peg 28........43-12-0
Wightman......Peg 21........42-4-0
Sorry I missed Sparky's winning catch but he'd already weighed in by the time we'd weighed our side of the lake.
Herbie struggling
to bend down with
his catch.
Shedders with his impressive catch.
Wightman with his 5th place catch all taken on a Number 3 Lobster Pot !All in all another disappointing match for me 9-1-0 put me last in the whole match (I seem to be having a lot of those lately) but at least I had a laugh the company was good (as always on MFS matches) and I'm looking forward to the next one at Monk lakes on Wednesday week. Next week will probably see me back at Willinghurst for another 6 hours of torture, unless I can find somewhere else to go.
