Orchard Lakes Sunday Series

First Sunday Series match of the year for me and after a coffee and bacon butty I pulled peg 8 out of the bag, this gave me 14.5m across to the far bank with a tree to fish under, a blank peg to my left and a hole in the margin reeds to my left. I set up 3 rigs to start a 4X12 Preston Inter 7 to 0.15mm and a 0.12mm bottom and 18 808 with Green Vespe hollow,  this I set to 2 feet deep and lined my pole up with the tree opposite shipped out till I hit that depth then marked my butt to get the same distance. The second rig was a Drennan Carp 6 on 0.15mm to 0.14 and an 18 B911, this was on doubled 8 and set to fish on a 2+2 line at 45ᵒ towards the blank peg to my left in about 4ft of water. Finally I set up a method feeder to fish opposite the peg next door if I needed to rest a swim or if it was hard, I also plumbed up the LH margin with my across rig for later.

Bait was a couple of pint of hemp, a tin of corn, a tin of meat in 8mm cubes, 2mm and 4mm pellet softened and mixed and a few expanders and at the all in I fed a pot of hemp and corn on my track line the shipped across with a 4mm expander on the hook and a kinder cup full of pellet. I lost 2 fish in the first 5 mins but then started to sort it out and the swim quickly got stronger, after 30 mins I changed my hooklength to a 0.15mm and a 16 B911, and shipped out with an 8mm cube of meat on with pellet in the kinder cup. This saw a marked and instant increase in the size of fish but it was not constant and I suffered from stints when the fish were in the swim but I could not get a proper bite, but by changing feeding and hookbaits I was able to keep fish coming all day of a decent average size.

By the end of the match I had tried my 2+2 line twice for 4 fish and had one from the margins, the rest had come from the far bank predominantly on meat over pellet. I ended up with a very un Februaryish weight of 104lb that gave me a section win and a second overall. It was won with 117lb so again I was about 10lb off the pace.