Yes I know it is January but due to the lakes being completely frozen over before Christmas the match had been moved to this date.
The venue for the day was Revels fishery near Cosmore and with tea, coffee and bacon buttys sorted in the morning it was time for the draw.With the weather as it was, a HOOLIGAN and threatening rain all day I fancied a peg on Old tree Lake as I knew that it is full of small stockies and alot of skimmers and these should feed in the conditions. My next choice would have been the back arm on the Main lake as that is where a few carp can usually be found on the far bank and last out of my top 3 was Main lake behind the Islands in the deeper water where the Skimmers tend to live. I drew peg 6 on Middle Lake, this put me back to back with Dead Tree Lake with an inflow pipe 7m to my left, alot of open water until the right hand side of the swim where it narrowed drastically and became the channel into the 'canal' part of the lake. Here it is about 8m wide and around 3ft deep however with the wind cutting straight across me if I faced that way I decided to take the wind in my face so concentrated on setting up my kit for the left side of the swim.
I plumbed a swim close to the inflow pipe for a corn line with a 4X14 Drennan Carp 2, 0.17 main to a 0.15 bottom and 16 hook. I had a skimmer rig for 8m out in the open water with worm, this was a 4X16 KC Carpa Chimp to 0.15 mainline and 0.12 bottom to an 18 Tubertini 808 and finally I set up a Preston Pellet feeder on 6lb Mainline and a 0.19mm bottom with a 14 Guru QM1 with a hair rigged bait band.
My bait list was some Micro pellet for the feeder, Worm, Caster, Hemp, Corn, Red maggot and a few Hookers for the feeder. I also mixed some Sonubaits F1 groundbait that I darkened off with a bit of dye in the clearish water and at the all in I put 8 balls of this with some worm, caster, micros and corn out onto my 8m line, I then put 1/4 of a cup of hemp with 30 grains of corn on that line then chucked the feeder baited with an 8mm punch of meat 18m up the left hand margin just off the drop off. It sat there for 15 mins with a slight liner so a recast saw a strikeable indication followed by another recast and a 4oz skimmer on 8mm meat! I thought that if they were eating that I should empty on the worm line, how wrong was I. To cut a long story short (for once) I swapped between my worm line and a maggot line that I started up in the mouth of the channel to my left for a procession of roach and perch.Most of the time if I hooked a skimmer it would be on for a couple of seconds and then off, I can only think that I was not giving them enough time to eat the worm (too much pellet fishing).
I also lost a carp/better fish on the feeder when the metal ring that you attach the hooklength to cut through the elastic just after the take, that annoyed me.
Anyway, I finished with 7lb 14oz of silvers on a frustrating day that gave me top weight on my lake and 8th place out of 28 anglers, so not too bad. the guys behind me on dead tree struggled with the wind across them all day although there were 2 double figure weights and the match was won from the main lake with over 20lb. Oh well always next year.
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