It was finally the day that I had been
looking forward to for a few weeks and the Intercorps was upon us again, team
for the day was myself, Pez, Martin, Kev, Craig and Adi, with Dave and DJ
running the bank. I had passed on the information from the day before and over
breakfast we discussed tactics as well as putting the world to rights.
Pez being team captain did the draw and it
put me on peg 14 on Falcon lake, not really where I wanted as I would have
preferred Skylark after the day before but I was there to do a job so off I
todled. Falcon is a newer lake and it showed with the banks looking very bare
and all the intel that we had received said that it would be a fish race and
that it would either be shallow fishing for A LOT of small fish or paste for
fewer bigger fish. As we could all fish paste that was the team plan, Pez and I
thought it would be a bit like Orchard lakes so short paste and heavy ish
feeding would be the way.
I set up 2 identical paste rigs, a slapping
rig just in case and a margin rig, I also pulled a short method rod out just in
case I had to re rig but didn’t think to make any new bait for it, speaking of
which I had hemp and 6mm pellet for the paste line and meat for down the edge.
I was ready with plenty of time to spare so
got to chat to Colin on the next peg and Boris a couple further along as I
thought that they would be my main competition in the section. The all in
sounded I went straight out again with a whole cup of hemp and pellet, and
started throwing meat down the edge, just for a chance of a quick fish I put
the slapping rig straight over the top and bites were instant, but I missed 5
on a 6mm pellet and when I hooked one it was a nearly transparent F1 so that
top kit got thrown up the bank and not looked at again.
I shipped the paste rig out over the top
and started to get indications straight away and that set the tone for the
first couple of hours, I kept feeding down the edge to my left and right but
could not get fish off those lines so I continued to plug away at the paste. I
decided to feed heavy to try and keep the fish on the deck, so every time I
hooked a fish I would feed two small handfuls of 6mm pellet and if the foul
hookers became a real problem then I would put in a cup of hemp and pellet and
then try the edge for a couple of minutes before going back over the paste
line. This tactic along with varying the consistency of the paste through the
day kept fish ticking over into the keep net, which was just as well as Colin
to my left and in my section was catching steadily shallow and he was also
finding the odd larger fish in amongst the tiddlers.
I tried a few things throughout the day to
get a bigger stamp of fish, such as the method over the short line and upping the
feed down the edge but nothing really seemed to be helping and with an hour and
a half to go Colin put some groundbait in down the edge to his left where he
had some lilies. As he was doing this I broke my reserve paste rig so had to re
rig, to this end I pinged the method rod across to the far bank and as I was
trying to remove the old rig I just about caught the rod but before it
disappeared. I caught about 15lb in a very short time but then ran out of
groundbait so had to go back on the paste line until the end of the match. As
the seconds ticked by Colin managed a couple of lumps and some better fish from
down the edge, but I was keeping up with him back on my paste line as the all-out
was called.
We knew it would be close as we were
chatting after the match and waiting for the scales, Dave came round and
pointed out that Kev thought that he was well down his section, Pez was around
second, I was first or second, and Adi was top 4 we thought. The scales showed
that it was better than we thought with Kev taking his section and as they came
around Colin weighed just over 30 kilos and I managed to squeak him by a couple
of kilos, those method fish had saved my bacon and I won the section. Adi
managed second and Pez had a third in section and we thought that it was all
over when Craig and Martin reported back that they had both had bad days on
Skylark and had both come mid-section. We discussed the day over a carvery and
calculated that we had 16points and we thought that the AGC had squeaked it, we
were wrong.
Rocky gave the results and handed out the
section monies, then gave the results for the teams, the AGC was third with 16
points but only 1 section winner, the Royal Artillery were second with 16
points but no third in section and the winners were the Royal Signals with 16
points but Pez’s third in section was enough to clinch the title for us. Next
year we get to choose the venue so that should be fun.
What would I do different:
I would have had the method set up and some
extra groundbait ready in future as it produced a much better stamp of fish and
the bites were easy to hit. It only takes 5 minutes to try it and the groundbait
can always go down the edge.
I should also have put my margin line
further away from myself as it may have produced a few more fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment