Witherington Farm Teams of 4

For this round it had been decreed by the snake mafia that I should be on Cottage and then John drew me out peg 10. Normally this would not be a problem but I had no idea how to approach the lake let along the peg due to a serious lack of confidence, things were made worst when I ended up pegged next to team mate Les so I challenged him to a quid and cracked on.

I looked at the lay of the land and decided to set up a bomb with bread for the island, a method for the same line in case it was good, a skimmer line at 11.5m where I had found a serious hole and finally a 5m line where I was going to fish for roach with maggot. I mixed two lots of ground bait, one for the skimmer line and one for the method, prepped my pellets and was ready with loads of time for the all in.

I cupped in 3 balls of groundbait and dead maggot at 11.5m before I despatched the bomb out into the island margins, instantly there were liners and after 20 minutes the tip went round and I set the hook into a very annoyed carp. He was annoyed because I had hooked him in the tail, so I added 2 no.8 shot 4 inches from the hook and the very next cast the tip went round again with another cottage lump ending up in the keepnet.

There was nothing else forth coming on the bomb with bread so I started to look for some silvers on my other 2 lines, my skimmer rig was a 0.4g MW pinger on 0.06mm mainline to a 0.10mm bottom with a size 20 Tubertini 808 tied to the end. My elastic choice was pink browning reflex for this line as it is nice and soft but with enough backbone to set the hook in shallow water and also deal with any rouge carp that may show up. Single maggot was the best bait but it was less than hectic with the odd roach and small skimmer coming to the net. The inside line was slightly better and I managed a quick run of slightly better skimmers but still nothing to set the world on fire.

The method went across to the island on a couple of occasions but I had trouble with funny bites that I only managed to connect with a couple and they were small goldfish.

It had been a struggle for most and I was left regretting not packing a waggler rod as Les had managed a run of 3 carp on the float from the shallows next to the island. I thought it would be close between us at the end and I was right. I finished with just over 20lb to les’s 18odd and we were 4^th and 5^th on the lake, team on the day managed to stay in 3^rd and closed the gap to 2^nd so a good result there.