AAF Group 2 Match 8, Witherington Farm

This league has been growing more and more frustrating for me this year as I am the match secretary, this basically means that I get to go to the fishery an hour early to place the pegs out and then have people ignore me when I give the pre match brief. Anyway this time I had help on the pegging as I do not fish the snake often preferring the lakes at withy due to the style of fishing, John and Stu turned up bright and early to help me place he 36 or so anglers around the lakes. We still missed a couple of things with 3 sets of eyes (but more of that in a minute), we finished the pegging and organised ourselves at the cafe. Big breakfast, prematch brief done and then the draw and I was off to A8, this was halfway in the section but just off a bend with a cut through to the inner snake.

I know the picture isn’t the greatest but you can make out the gap through to the inner snake, now this is a decent are but I fancied the end pegs to do alright as we had tried to put a bit of room in for them, Bri on A2 had bags of room to his right and he was fancied for the section. We also discovered that Stu had drawn the only 3 peg line that we had put in by accident, talk about irony!! However, knowing what I do about the snake though I decided on a varied attack and I set up a paste rig to fish on the 2+2 line and the same depth at 13m towards the gap, I set up a margin rig for my left hand edge towards a blank platform, I set up a top 2 whip rig for silvers and finally I set up a dobbing rig for the far bank.

My plan was simple and at the all in I shipped out with a big lump of paste to 5m with the paste pot full of hemp and pellet and I waited, it did not take long and on my second put in the float trembled before disappearing down a hole and fish no.1 was hooked. The Blue Browning Reflex elastic made short work of the fish and I soon had a 5lb F1 in the net, I shipped out again and had another bite on the next put in that saw another smaller F1 into the keep net and then the swim fell silent, I got a couple of indications off very small fish and put the paste rig up the bank for the time being.

I shipped across with my dobbing rig baited with three dead reds hoping to find a carp under the far bank foliage but after a fruitless 30 minutes with only a couple of small roach to show for it I decided to put that up the bank, feed my paste line long and then look on the top 2 rig for some roach. I was not disappointed and I managed a good run of roach and perch before they backed off, I was using pink Reflex elastic so it was easy to swing most of the fish and this line kept me occupied for the best part of an hour and a half but then I noticed a few carp coming in further down to my left. This forced my hand a little and I shipped across with paste onto my long line, I got alot of indications and a foul hooked skimmer so at this point I set up a pellet rig to fish over this line. This gave me a couple of small skimmers but I was still not setting the world on fire, Gary 3 pegs to my right had been concentrating on the entrance to the inner lake and he had a number of decent sized carp that were reluctant to come too far into the open water, but when I saw them start to move my way it took me no time to drop the dobbing rig on their head. It was not right and they spooked off, by this time there was only half hour left and I had only caught 3 carp, and a handful of silvers for about 6kg.

Suddenly the carp moved out of their safe zone and I was able to mug 2 carp in 2 dobbs, then I dropped in on my paste line and had another 2 fish in 3 put ins, it was too little too late in my mind and I was left regretting not trying around the corner earlier in the day as I called the all out.

Bri from the end peg was following the scales around, he had managed 19.570Kg from the end, I thought it might be close but I turned out to be a decent carp short with 16.980Kg, this was still enough for 2^nd in section and it helped the team to another 2^nd on the day. Congratulations must go to John Dewberry who drew the middle of a section and managed to win the match with 19.770KG, helped alot by around 10Kg of silvers that he took on the short pole line.