05/01/2014 Withy Silvers match

Another weekend and it has been looking as though I will need to start building an ARK soon, but as usual the alarm went off at dark o’clock, I ate, loaded and defrosted the van and pointed it in the direction of Witherington Farm for a silvers only match.  We all met up in the café for a breakfast and discussed the day ahead and with the weather forecast predicting more rain and strong winds a simple plan was concocted to try a couple of things out.  The draw was conducted with the eight of us destined to go and sit around Cottage lake as it was the only one on its own, and I drew peg 1.

 As we walked out of the café there were a load of the Eastleigh anglers cutting about in the car park, we were lucky as they had called their match off as they could not safely drive to the snake!  Anyway my plan was to try sitting it out on the tip, I set up my ever faithful Force bomb rod with a small drennan cage feeder on a running rig, 0.12mm bottom and a size 18 hook for double dead maggot. I also set up a light waggler but this only got thrown around for 10 minutes and then was not seen for the rest of the match.

Well my day was a non-starter really, two goldfish that didn’t count in the first hour, then to try and alleviate small indications I set up my 8ft F1 wand with a tiny method feeder and chucked that on the same line for another goldfish. I then dropped a turn shorter and managed a skimmer and two roach over the next hour and a half before losing the plot and going to the shop to get some food.  Before I left however I put in 5 feeders laced with dead maggot.

On my return I took some shots of how high the water was:

On my return I managed two skimmers and a perch in quick succession before another lull, so I fed 4 more feeders with 30 minutes to go and received a few liners so out went the method and I managed another skimmer in the last 10 minutes. Wow that had been a hard day looking at this view:

My 3lb 3oz was enough for not last, I took a quid off Pez that he managed to run off before paying??!! Well done to Mick Craddock for winning off of peg 9 catching just shy of 10lb of skimmers on wag and pole.  The question is would the tip have worked there? As it was I got harried by John and Kev both with pole caught small fish weights of 5-6lb. Viaduct again later this week so here’s to hoping for a return to form.