This match was due to be held on the Dorset Stour on the Hanford Farm stretch, however, due to heavy rain through the week before it was moved to Coking Farm Fishery, Rush Lake. We all met up in the car park next to meadow lake with most people deciding not to risk the drive along the grass to save themselves a 5 minute walk with their kit. I decided otherwise and drove my van to the side of the lake,(I later came very close to regretting this).
All the usual suspects were in attendance and it was decided that it would be an out and out silvers match with carp not counting. I was second in the draw queue and peg 7 was my destination for the day, oh and I had the scales for company, Joy!!
I got to my peg a whole thirty yards from the back of my van and found a big hole on the bank exactly where I would have set my platform up for the day. Much huffing, puffing and cursing saw me eventually find a comfortable place to sit my box without the threat of a swim however, it placed me about a meter back from the bank. Not good in winter when the fish tend to back off so I started plumbing my pole up and out to 16m.
I decided that my plan would revolve around two lines, 5m loose feeding maggot for Roach with a 4X12 Drennan Roach float, a spread shotting pattern, 0.10 main, 0.08 bottom and a 20 Drennan silverfish match hook. Elastic was no.5 through three sections, strong enough to swing most Roach in and soft enough not to bump them off. The second line turned out to be at 14.5m and was going to be fed with groundbait, caster, hemp, pinkie and a few grains of corn. My groundbait mix was 50/50 Marine halibut and Sensas lake and was mixed quite stiff as it turned out to be about 10 feet deep and towing, my rig for this line consisted of a 4X20 KC Carpa Chimp on 0.15mm Main to 0.12mm bottom and an 18 808 for a start, elastic was blue hydro through a big bore power kit.
So the all in sounded, I cupped in 6 balls of groundbait containing 50ml (small drennan pole pot) each of hemp and caster, a pinch of pinkies and about 40 grains of corn, these were spread over an area about a meter square as I was looking for Bream or Skimmers on that line and I like to give them a bit of room to feed over. All the time I was pinging in 10-12 maggots over my 5m line and this is where I started, once again after 20mins without so much of a sniff on my maggot alarm bells were ringing so I had already reduced the amount of feed going in to 4 maggots regularly, I now started using a light catty to try and group them even closer. 40 mins in and no indications I thought it was time to go on the skimmer line as by all accounts no one on the lake had caught a silver fish yet. I hooked on 2 red maggot and shipped out resting my pole between my legs and on a front support to keep the float dead still, after another 20 minutes without an indication I decided it was time for lunch and with the long pole out I started my sandwich. Just as I was finishing I thought I saw a slight indication, then it dipped under, I dropped my sandwich and struck like Zorro! I missed it! My first indication in nearly 2 hours and I had missed it, I made up a couple of new swear words under my breath, swapped hookbait to a chunk of worm and hoping for a tiny perch, if nothing else, shipped back out. After 10 minutes my float slipped under and my well timed (ish) strike met with about 4 feet of Blue Hydro coming out and the unmistakable nod nod of a decent skimmer, however, a few minutes later I slipped my net under 5lb of very cold foul hooked carp. Back it went and the news came across the lake that my mate Craig had just had two skimmers in two casts on the feeder, with nothing to loose I got off my box and set up a pellet cone rig on my 11ft light feeder rod, a foot of 0.15mm powerline and a 16 QM1 finished the set up however although I received a few liners I didn't get any real bites. Most of the fish were shoaled up on the other side of the lake and most of the fish around us were up in the water. This was proved with the weigh in, Craig won the match with a little over 5lb, second had a Roach for 3oz, the remaining 11 of us failed to bother the scales with a silver fish, nobody in my section weighed in, but the guy pegged on the other side of the lake to me had 22 Carp and a fantastic days fishing on the maggot feeder chucked to the island. A few fish came from down our end on wagglers chucked at the island set to about 3ft.
Can't wait for Round 2 at Warmwell fishery.
As a final note I decided to fish on for an hour to try and catch a carp on the tip, I still failed and then Craig came round and told me that everyone whom had driven up to the lake had struggled to get away from the bottom corner, yep you guessed it THANK YOU Craig for pushing me out the mud.
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