11 June 2015

AAF Gp2 Match 8, Witherington Farm 10/6/15

Somehow I had volunteered to run this match as Craig was away at Whiteacres… I had also covered for him a meeting earlier in the week so he had better bring me some rock!  My morning didn’t have the best of starts as I woke up at half six, thirty minutes after my alarm was supposed to wake me up, so a quick sprint to Salisbury to pick Tony up and then to the lakes to peg the inner and outer snake.  It turned out that we had plenty of time and thankyou to Tony for pegging the inner as it meant that we had enough time to grab a breakfast before I started the booking in.
It was good to see Dave back on the bank and there was plenty to talk about as everyone was booking in, again Kev and Adi came to my rescue to help out with some of the admin, leaving me to sort numbers and the other good stuff.
The match brief and draw went without a hitch and soon everyone was lining up on the banks of the inner and outer snake.  I had ended up on C11 and this turned out to be permanent peg 84 I think.



It looked really good with a blank peg to my left, two or three blank pegs around the corner to my right and the bridge leading to the outer in the corner to my right, but alas as I had seen Rocky and been asked how far to either side can we go I said to the first leg of the next platform, should have said it on the match brief as well but hey ho.  This however, shot me in the foot as it put me 8-10m short of where the fish could back off to, but everyone was in the same boat so off I went sorting my life out.
I was ready for the all in even after a trip back to the shop to get a tin of hemp and a drink and after calling it I fed 3 balls of groundbait onto a skimmer line at 11.5m down the track and went straight onto a paste line at 2+2 towards the gap to my right.  The rig for this was a 4X10 Big H paste float on 0.19mm mainline, a 0.18mm hooklength, a size 4 T175 and red vespe elastic.  It took all of 5 minutes until fish number 1 was on its way to the waiting landing net and at about 3lb it was a good start, but after that it was very slow, I went across to the far bank fishing paste again on the same rig as it was nearly 4 feet deep across next to the reeds.  This gave me another lost foul hooker and a carp before it went dead so with 45 minutes I decided to try the skimmer line, the result was not good as in twenty minutes I only had a couple of small skimmers to show for it. I went back on the short paste line and suffered a shallow foul hooker that dropped off again so I got off my box and set up a shallow paste rig, I also mixed some slop out of my groundbait with a lot of water.  I tried the 5m line with it to no avail and then shipped it across to the far bank, straight away I had another foulhooker at 18 inches so I shallowed up to a foot deep tried again.  A 2lb Carp and a goldfish quickly fell to the new tactic but again it soon dried up, but, the carp were moving around shallow so I quickly set up a standard shallow rig and stared firing 6mm pellet at it.  Th rig was a 0.2g Crystal dibber on 0.17mm mainline to a 0.12mm hooklength and a size 20 Guru Pellet wag hook with a bait band, the elastic started off a a yellow Colmic hollow but after a lost fish in the far bank reeds I geared it up to a blue Browning hollow elastic.  That sorted them out and over the next hour or so I was able to put another 4 or so carp and a couple of goldfish into the net, but then the wind picked up again so I started to look around my other lines.
It was slow until the last hour and a half when I shipped down the edge on a paste rig and lost two fish in 3 fish in short order before scaling up to a size 5 T175hook. This sorted them out and in the last half hour I had 4 fish from my edge and 2 carp from the skimmer line on paste after big potting softened 4mm pellet on both lines.  I had to call the all out straight after a small goldfish but to be fair I was happy that it was over, I managed to be largely packed up before the scales made it round and my 18kg odd was enough for 5th in the section. John dewberry off the worst peg on the inner won the section with 25kg odd and Docs won the match from behind me on the outer.
Many thanks to all those who helped out and I am looking forward to going somewhere newish after a short holiday.

What would I do different
I think that I should have persevered on the shallow across line and I need to look at some of my elastic choices as I lost too many fish on too soft elastic.

I also think that I should have just fed hemp and pellet on the track line as the silvers I caught were considerably smaller than other peoples who did not seem to feed groundbait.

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