Withy Teams of 4, 7/12/13

It was back to Witherington farm for my first Teams of 4 since I have been back, and it was time for my second breakfast in a week. Team for the day was myself, Steve, Les and Gerry and it was decreed that I would be back on Selwood.  I was happy with that but not so happy when after we had filled in all the team sheets and paid our money that it turned out that we could have swapped a couple of anglers around, that aside it was good to see a few friendly faces and have a bit of banter before the draw.  Steve did the honors for Browning Andover Green and I had peg 7 as my destination for the day, I challenged Ian R for a quid and giggled a bit as he was sat on 14, not the best peg for him.

I decided to concentrate on skimmers for the most part of the match so set up a groundbait line at 14.5 m in a slight depression, a small groundbait feeder for towards the island and finally a margin rig for towards the platform to my right that was empty.  I prepped some pellet, mixed my groundbait and then decided to pull a method rod out of the bag, just in case.  

I had decided on a positive approach for the day so at the all in i fed 6 balls of groundbait with 2 mm pellet and dead maggot at 14.5 meters, I fed around 40 caster, the same of micros and half a dozen grains of corn down the edge to my right and then sent out a 4 hole drennan cage feeder 1 m short of the reeds on the island.

Not alot happened on the feeder apart from a couple of liners and I saw that the carp were up in the water, so I grabbed my method rod, cut off the feeder and set up a pop up bomb rig with a 12 inch hook length. Three 10 mm punches of bread went on the hair and out it went towards the island, I was going to be leaving the casts for 15 minutes but silvers soon put paid to that as twitches on the tip soon gave way to it going around with a skimmer on the end.  Nothing on the next cast so it got thrown up the bank for the time being and I went out onto the skimmer line, it was at this point that Kev in the peg to my right lost his second carp on the pole line, and since there was nothing happening on the skimmmer line I decided to set up a new rig to see if I could start a pellet line, keeping the pole at 14.5 meters I found a slight rise 6 inches shallower than the depression, in line with a bush on the island.  I fed a few pellets and chucked the feeder out to give the new line a chance to settle, this time the tip went round with an odd bite that seemed to swim towards me as I wound in, next thing I knew a 10lb + carp swirled by my feet turned and before I could loosen the drag my 0.12 mm hooklength parted seeing me gutted.

I went back onto the line but this time nothing happened, so in desperation I went down the edge, I had a small cup on the end of my pole and i filled it with 3 grains of corn, 20 caster and the same of micros, dropped the rig on top and 15 seconds later the float dipped, i struck and was attached to carp number 1. It tried to get under the platform but the Reflex 10-12 elastic soon pulled it out of its lair and carp number 1 was scooped up and into my net, at around 6 pounds it was a good start and it was followed 5 minutes later by its twin. The successful rig was a 4-8 MW carp slim on 0.18 mm mainline and a 0.14 mm hooklength terminated in a size 1 Tubertini 175. 

I went back around the pole lines with not alot happening until I cast the bread out to the island with about an hour and a half to go and the tip went round again, carp number 3 was soon followed again on the tip by his baby brother, then I had a skimmer on the feeder and another carp down the edge.Then disaster as I bumped another margin carp off and all of a sudden the line died, fortunately Kev pointed out that my skimmer line was fizzing like a Jacuzzi so I had a quick look on there for another skimmer but then I lost one by trying to rush it in, I hoped that that would not be critical and then went down the edge for the last 5 minutes a couple of liners and then the all out.

As the scales came around it was a tale of woe, all around the lake, my 5 carp and 3 skimmers went 31lb and that was winning until we got around to Johnny Gray on peg 11, he had 4 carp and a few skimmers for 41lb, my final hurdle was Ray Haywood on peg 15 as he had been catching steadily until a pole breakage prevented him from fishing to the island, lucky for me though as he weighed in 28lb. 

This was enough for me to take second in section and second overall as the other lakes had fished hard all over, the team news was not good however with both Steve and Les on the Green team suffering bad results and I managed to take a quid off Ian from the Blue team as he was last on the lake.

Next stop will be the great carp hunt again in a coupe of weeks as work will be getting in the way first but ce la vie.