Withy To4, 5 Nov 2011

For this match it had been decided that I would be fishing Selwood lake, this meant that I was in for a tough day and that I needed to be drawn a decent peg, I wanted an island chuck as I felt that this would give me the best chance of catching my target weight. Keith returned from the draw with peg 11, this was not really what I wanted as I had no island chuck and was basically forced into fishing towards the corner. To make my life easier I set by box up facing down towards the corner to the right and plumbed up a number of swims along the bank. The starter rig for here consisted of a 0.18mm mainline to 0.16mm bottom and a size 2 Tubertini 175 hook. This was set on medium hollow elastic and had a short robust float attached to try and survive the far margins in which there were overhanging reeds and a platform to contend with. I also set up a dobbing rig for down and around the corner, this was 0.18mm mainline to 0.14mm bottom with a 16 B911 hook on yellow Reflex hollow elastic. The float was a 4X12 Big H border and the bait was 8mm punched bread. Finally I plumbed up a Drennan Carp 7 on 0.16 to 0.14mm line with an 18 B911 again on yellow Reflex elastic, at 2+2 straight in front of my platform where the depth was only 2 feet deep. The theory was that if fish were on that line I should be able to see them, and I was going to fish meat on this line for the resident skimmers and big carp.

I was set up with plenty of time to spare and watched the water before the all in, also chatting with the other anglers, it turned out that last time the lake had been won with 20 odd pounds! The average size of carp in the lake is around 7-8 lb so I only needed 3 or 4 for good points and now my target weight was halved to 20lb, shouldn’t be too hard.

The all in was called and I shipped my dobbing rig into various spots along the right margin for the first 30 minutes, I did not even get an indication until I had worked my way all the way to in front of the next platform, at 16m the float dipped and I was attached to fish no.1. At 3oz I was not really after roach, but had a couple more looks in that area for a couple more as I was now off the mark. I decided at this point to feed 2 of the spots that I had earmarked when plumbing up and put a small helping of hemp and corn on the left and pellet and meat on the right. The rest of the day was really a case of chopping and changing over the 2 lines to try and maximise my chance of catching a carp, this also saw me changing the way I fed the right swim a couple of times but all I had from there was a couple of roach. In fact there was not even a sign of a carp on the right hand swim but when a fish moved into the left swim they gave themselves away by bubbling freely.

I managed to land 2 carp from the left swim, one of 6lb and a baby at 3-4lb, I also lost two fish into the reeds and under the platform due to my elastic being too soft and stretchy, something that I will be looking to change in the future. The 5m line also showed fish moving across it all afternoon, I caught a couple of skimmers before the big carp moved in, I landed one at 9-10lb and spooked another couple from under my pole tip. It was either the pole or rig spooking them so I have bought a couple of smaller stumpier floats to try and prevent the fish spooking. The all out was called too soon as I had two carp feeding on my 5m line at the time but I had ended up with 3 carp and a few bits for a total weight of just over 19lb, this was enough for a section win with 2^nd catching 4 carp for 18lb but the weights were very tight and if I had not caught the roach and skimmers I would have been 3^rd or 4^th in section.

I learnt a few lessons, basically about how to feed on the day and to try and keep my loosefed meat tighter as when it was closely grouped the bites came quicker.