FLE Fishery (formally Greenridge Farm Fishery) Open

So it was time to start chasing some County Champs points and so it was off to Greenridge farm for an 18peg open. I arrived at the draw on time even after a diversion through the Golden Arches and it was to be peg 21 on Canal 3 that I would be sat in all day.

Looking in front I had a ton of options but decided that with the info I had managed to pick up about the place and the clarity of the water I would fish a far bank line or two with maggot, a track line with corn or maggot and finally a far bank/ margin rig for dobbing bread about the nooks and crannies. All the rigs had 0.15mm main to 0.14 hook lengths and size 18 B911 so I was ready to go with plenty of time to spare, elastics were either Green Vespe E2 Hollow for the mag and bread rig and doubled 8 on the track rig.

At the all in I potted a little hemp, 20 grains of corn and about the same number of maggots out onto my track rig at 9m in the deepest water, and then I shipped a 6mm punch across and under the far bank foliage. It took 20 mins but the float dipped in my 10^th choice spot across on the far bank and a 2lb carp was soon in the keepnet, however, that was when I started to notice problems. Greenridge is full of Topmouth Gudgeon and these love bread, if there were no carp around the float would be constantly moving as they decimated the hookbait. So I tried my maggot line to no avail and then I fed a little on one line and tried another. Nothing was working so I started to explore the margin to my left with the bread rig, pushing it in amongst the snags I was able to extract 13 Carp in total for just over 30lb and I believe 8th Place.

During the day all the guys catching to my left were fishing up the far bank slope in about 2ft of water and barely feeding if at all. Next time I would use more durable floats as I trashed seven rigs on overhangs and other snags and I would think about starting closer to myself and then chasing the fish as they backed off, give it a rest by fishing the track for a period then starting again in a more logical manner. Possible even fishing a deck maggot rig in the same spots as maggot seemed to produce the bigger fish today.

Anyway hopefully points on the Table so job done.