AAF Challenge Match, Witherington Farm

This was the inaugural AAF challenge and we were against Andover AC at Witherington Farm, talk over breakfast was about how paste would be a good tactic and that we were likely to get wet by the end of the day. We were half right, John drew peg 24 out of the bag for me on outer snake and this gave me 13m to a piece of collapsed bank opposite, two blank pegs to my left and a gap in the reeds opposite peg 25 at 16m to my left. On plumbing up I found 2 ½ feet across next to the reeds and 3 feet on my 16m line, I set up a standard far bank rig for here with a 0.13mm bottom and 18 B911 for fishing pellet and set it on yellow Vespe hollow. I plumbed a paste line at 11m to my left and this was on Red Vespe hollow to a 0.19mm mainline and 0.17mm bottom to a 12 B911, my float of choice was a 4X10 Big H Paste. And finally I plumbed the margins on a 2+2 line to my left where there was a small overhanging plant, it was quite deep under it so I did not hold my breath.

The match itself was an interesting affair with me not catching alot in the first hour until I saw a lump swim across the shallows tight over, this saw me rig up a 0.1g Sconezone Wellhardz on 0.17mm main to a 0.15mm bottom and a 16 B911 to green Vespe Hollow. I cupped about 4 toss pots worth of bait into the shallows and tried the paste line before going back over and catching carp steadily through the day to low doubles. I would feed if I had not had an indication for a couple of minutes and found at the end that it was best to fish almost straight after feeding as that was when the fish were most aggressive. I had 2 Goldfish and a skimmer on paste and lost a foulhooker down the edge but still managed to finish up with 33kg. I won my section (of 2) and had the biggest weight on our board (pegs 11-31) but the other arm of the lake had fished slightly better than ours and I ended up in 4^th overall. Andover AC took the win by 2 points and the match was won by an Andover Angler with 66kg, so well done gents but we will have the trophy back next year.