This was
the final round of the teams of 4 so we were hoping to at least get another
decent result on the day, John drew me peg 4 on Selwood again and I was pretty
confident of doing alright even though I had heard rumours that the carp had
been spawning in the week. I had a plan
and it was going to revolve around catching skimmers for as long as I could and
then to try and target a couple of carp in the last couple of hours. I set up a
paste rig to fish in front of the platform on peg 3, a meat rig at 5 m and a
small groundbait feeder that I clipped up at ¾ of the way towards the islalnd.
My bait
was also simple 600g dry skimmer mix, a pint of dead reds, a pint of caster, ¾
of a kilo of worm some pellet 6mm meat and hemp. I also had the remainder of my
1kg dry allowance of groundbait for paste. At the all in I fed a half a pot of
hemp with pellet and corn on my left hand paste line, a lesser amount of hemp
and some meat on my 5m meat line and then cast out a large open ended feeder 3
times with no hooklength before starting to fish on the tip. This was a small
cage feeder on 0.20mm Cenex feeder line with a 0.12mm hooklength and a size 18
Kamasan B911 hook, I was using quite light line and small hooks confident that
if a big carp did pick up the bait then my Commercial bomb and Ultimatch reel
combo would be smooth enough to deal with it. For the first couple of hours
sport was steady with me leaving the feeder in for about 2 minutes a cast if I
had not had a bite and I had caught skimmers up to a pound. It was looking as
though I would need a carp in order to do very well in the section so after a
couple of hours I rotated around my carp lines with no indications, and after
around 10 minutes of searching, I was back to looking for skimmers on the tip.
During the ten minutes that I had been off the line I had not fed it and when I
returned sport had slowed considerably with just the odd fish to show for my
efforts, I tried bigger and smaller feeders and also leaving the bait longer
but I had lost them, and with people around me catching a few carp I made the
decision to concentrate on trying to catch one for the last couple of hours. I
started by plumbing up a new swim in the edge to my right in around 18 inches
of water and I fed all of my remaining feeder groundbait on this line in an
attempt to pull a fish in.
It worked
very quickly and within 15 minutes I had a couple of carp to upper double figures
cruising around and colouring up the water in the edge. This is when I dropped
a major clanger and I tried to catch them on paste, I had not had a proper
indication on my banker paste line and it was not looking good, in hindsight a
couple of worms would have been a better choice of hookbait, but out went the
paste. I had an indication after 5 minutes that saw me strike and hit a brick
wall, this wall then nodded and came off as I believe that I had foul hooked
it, the explosion that happened in the edge was spectacular as around 20lb of
annoyed carp bolted off my bait, spattering it everywhere. 10 minutes later and
I had a definite foul hooked fish come off again very quickly but that was the
end of my sport, although I had a few fish cruising in open water I was unable
to mug any, although I missed 1 bite, and I only saw indications of fish over
my lines again after the all out.
I managed
to weigh 20lb 12oz of skimmers and this was enough for 5th on the
lake, I had only needed another couple of pounds for 4th, 10 for 3rd
and 30 for 1st, in hindsight (and this is a tough one to swallow) I
should have stayed on the skimmers until I had used up all my bait for them or
the last 30-60minutes as I may have doubled my weight as they seemed to be
coming in waves that increased in strength. When I stopped feeding them they
moved infront of peg 2 and he caught a few and a couple of carp for 25lb odd.
That was it for this competition and we as a team finished alright on the day
but not enough to claw our way into the top 3. I will be back given half a
chance next year.
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