This round got moved from the river as Staverton had not fished well, so we were off to a stretch of canal that only a few people had practiced. Not a good start. A bacon butty and coffee despatched before the draw, and Barry drew me out a peg along the Beeches stretch of the canal. I got quite excited as I walked along the towpath looking at all the swims with far bank features and the word on the bank being that mine was a section full of bonus fish. I got to my peg and suddenly realised that I was about to have a bad day out of the 7 pegs in the section mine 2 had no real far bank features to speak of and mine was the worst of the two. Kevin Rowles on his walk to the end peg of my section (not where you want to see him) stopped to tell me that I would do well to beat the end pegs from my peg and then Barry tipped up and told me that I would be lucky to beat anybody from my peg.
This made my mind up and my plan for the day was to catch as many roach as possible and to look on a bonus line but not to concentrate on it like I thought that a few others would do. I set up a 5m bread rig, 0.6g float on 0.12mm main and a 0.08mm bottom to a 20 B511 and no.5 elastic through 3 sections. I also set up an on the drop rig for 11m and a deck rig for the same line, both on 0.1-0.07mm with 22 B590 hooks and no.2 and 3 elastic respectively. I set up a skimmer rig for the 11m line, a track worm rig and a far bank bread rig just in case it was harder than I would like but due to the ship back I would prefer to fish shorter.
At the all in I fed a Satsuma of licky at 5m and then 3balls of No.1 groundbait with a few squats and pinkies at 11m before dropping my bread rig in close. It took a couple of minutes but I soon had fish no.1 in the net but the problem was that the guys either side had both caught bonus fish in the first 10 minutes. I decided to try and ignore them and get my head down but after 40mins I had caught 25 roach for 2lb and the guy to my left had taken a hybrid and a big perch already and the guy to my right had caught a skimmer of about a pound. I was about to go over my 11m line when I looked up and witnessed a pike strike right on top of my feed so I fed a small ball of groundbait and also my worm lines and had another look inside. After 5 minutes I shipped out a half a dendrabena and looked on my 1st worm line, nothing happened so I looked on my second, after about 80 secs the float slid away, I struck and bumped off what felt like a small perch. Next put in I had a small tommy ruffe so that was chucked up the bank in disgust and I looked on the 11m line. I was able to catch roach at about 80 to the pound quite quick but I started to have pike problems with them striking on my feed area. To overcome this I started a bread line at 14.5m and could catch quite quickly but I saw the guy 2 pegs to my left catch a small carp and a perch in quick succession so decided to start a worm line right over in about 14 inches of water. This backfired with only a small perch to show for my efforts and a destroyed bread line so for the last 45 minutes I got my head down on the 11m line. I found that every time there was a strike on that line then a small ball of groundbait brought them back within 10 minutes, still not quick enough. The all out could not come soon enough as the end pegs had smashed the section and the guy to my left had caught a few as well, I was on scales and Kev Rowles had nearly 30lb of carp and skimmers from the left end peg. The right end peg had caught 18lb+ for second and finally the guy to my right had 14lb ish. My 4lb 1.5oz was only enough for 6th but I had been 1.5ozs away from 4th!! I had taken the right plan for the peg but felt let down at the end to have been so close when competing against the pegs I was. Still at least I know what to do next time.
Lessons learnt were again don’t try to chase big fish if there are none there. Hare and the tortoise springs to mind!!
No comments:
Post a Comment