Match Fishing Subscriber Classic, 08/09/11

This was my first time on this event and I was impressed with the size and organisation, 178 anglers descended onto Makins over all 3 phases. At the draw I was after any of the lakes in Phase 1 as the fish are bigger and they are generally open water venues, or Reptile on phase 2 as I believe it held my best chance of a good result from there. After a 2^nd breakie that saw me putting the world to rights with a couple of RAF lads, my hand went into the bucket and I pulled out Snake 7 on Phase 2. I was not overly impressed but the thought of a day fishing a new lake was enough to see me off to my peg with a renewed enthusiasm.

As you can see I had a multitude of options, and what this does not show is that there was a blank peg on my right with a small bay and another point coming from the right at 14m to my right. My plan was simple, meat to the middle point as I could see some carp moving around that point, pellet to the left hand point and then I was going to fish down the edge to my right using the loose groundbait trick. I plumbed up about half a section along the right hand point, the meat rig to fish there was a 4X12 Big H float on 0.17mm mainline and a 0.15mm bottom to a 16 B911 on Green Vespe Elastic through my tension puller kit and a small cad pot mounted on the end of the kit. The pellet rig for the left line if it was hard was a 4X12 Big H Border float with a cut down bristle, this was rigged on 0.15mm main line to a 0.13mm bottom and an 18 B911, this was set on yellow Browning Reflex elastic in case skimmers became important again through a puller kit and with a small cad pot. The margin rig started off as a 0.3g Frenzee FP800 on 0.19mm mainline and 0.17mm bottom with a size 3 Tubertini 175 to fish double corn, this was all set on green preston hollow elastic as the fish seemed pretty much contained in the bay with few snags. As I had plemty of time before the all in I also set up a Standard paste rig to fish a 2+2 line at 10 oclock towards the guy pegged to my left and also a small method on my 8ft Force Carp Wand to fish to the gap in the islands. My bait was some 1mm and 3mm pellet mixed together, a pint of riddled meat, a kilo of green swimstim, some 6mm sinking expanders (Soaked overnight), 2 pints of hemp, 2 tins of corn, 8mm meat cubes and punched polony for the hook and finally a bit of paste mix.

At the all in I decided not to feed anywhere but the line I was fishing so I filled my cad pot up with 50/50 hemp and riddled meat, and shipped out an 8mm punch of polony to the right hand point. I did not have to wait long and within 2 minutes I got a liner. Next put in carp no.1 was on its way to the net, this was followed by no.2 then the liners started as the fish came up in the water for the riddled meat. I quickly set up a shallow rig with a cad pot and this resulted in an instant bite but then the carp backed off, the golden first hour was up. I fed half a pot of bait on the meat line to try and get the fish down and had a look on the pellet line; I had fed a small nugget of pellets about 10 mins before I went on it and started to get bites from skimmers straight away. I had 5 then my first carp from this line showed up, but again I was getting problems with the carp causing liners in the slightly deeper margins. I rested the lines, heavy potted and also tried shallow to no avail but I was landing a couple and with 2 hours to go I had 6 carp in the net. It was time to prime the margin, so out went 3 pots of groundbait and about 20 grains of corn and within 10 minutes the bottom was starting to colour up so I had a look. I foul hooked a carp almost instantly and then another so I decided to swap over to a paste rig down the edge. This was the turning point of my match and in the last hour I managed around 6 carp to 6lb from down the edge on paste. Before I knew it all out was called.

I had ended up with around 15 carp and a few silvers, I had taken a carp on every rig I had set up including the 2+2 paste and method, around the lake it had obviously fished hard and after the scales came around I was surprised to have ended up with 51lb dead. At the presentation it turned out that this had been enough for a section win so some cash and Dynamite Baits goodies were gratefully received and then it was off on the marathon journey to York via Peterborough. If I could do it again I would probably fish paste across on my pellet line and I would have spent longer on the method to the bar, especially as it turned out that I was 8lb short of winning the Phase and 10lb short of 4^th place, either one of those would have seen me in the Drennan Knockout cup 2012! Wait till next year.