Due to the continued flooding at Witherington Farm this
match was moved to Dandys Ford Fishery just down the road, it was pretty easy to
find with the sat nav taking me straight to the front door. The team was all
enjoying the fabulous café and the breakfast and banter were both excellent,
the team for the day was Keith, John, Ian and myself and I volunteered to do
the draw. It wasn’t a bad team draw with
Keith and Ian both happy, whereas John and myself were a little less happy, I
was on Culvert 6 and this was about the only peg without an island chuck in my
section, I had Ray Hayward sat to my left and Daryl Mayers in his own little
pond to my right so at least I had someone to talk to.
My plan for the day was simple, I found a couple of spots
at 14.5m that were the same depth and also plumbed up under the aerator (2
inches deeper), for these lines I had a 14X11 MW F1 Slim on 0.16mm mainline to
a 0.12 bottom and a 16 808 hook, elastic was doubled 5 solid as I wanted a
positive but forgiving elastic in the depth of water. It was about 7ft on those line so with the
sun out I plumbed around to find some shallower areas, I had a nice tree to my
right that would provide shade and shelter so I set up a 4X8 MW Carp slim to
fish on that line, blue Reflex elastic and a size 2 Tubertini 175 on 0.14mm
bottom were the main parts of that rig. I also set up a rig to fish at 2+2 just
at an angle to my left where I found a slight flat spot on the ledge, float
this time was a taper tip Diamond and the elastic was lightened to a yellow
reflex but the hook and line was the same as the margin rig as I did not
believe that the carp got too big in the lake.
I was just about ready for the all in and started by
cupping meat in at 5m before feeding one of my open water lines with a 2mm and
4mm pellet mix, I then shipped out to the aerator with 10 4mm pellet in the
kinder pot and a 4mm expander on the hook, it took 20 minutes but I got a 5lber
into the net, by this time Daryl had caught 4 already and I was preparing for
the worst. In fact it seemed as though carp were coming from the shallower margins
all around the lake so after 3 fish in the first 50 minutes I tried down my right
edge, I had been dripping pellet and corn in since the start and within 3
minutes I was playing another 4lb carp, I thought I had cracked it but it died
as quickly as it started.
I knew now that I was in for a reasonable day as I could
hear people moaning around the lake about how hard it was fishing and only a
few people were really catching with any consistency, Daryl being one as were
the two guys opposite. I started to try and string a few fish together but
ended up having a frustrating few hours with only a few small roach to show for
my efforts, I even set up a wag and tried to poach some fish from next to
Daryls swim.
I tried moving margin swims up and down the shelf, which gave me another couple of small fish, dobbing bread and corn all around the margins and shallow wag in open water before I managed a few late fish from the
2+2, margin and aerator but that was it and I had struggled, but not as much as the guys
to my left, even Ray had only managed 3 small carp all day and was very
frustrated. We came to the conclusion that the fish were backing off due to the clarity of the water and that they were mostly sunbathing in the glorious sunshine, so if you did not have shallow water to aim at you were struggling from the start.
I ended up with 24lb ( I think) and this was enough for 6
points from a possible 10, the team won on the day with John getting 7 points,
Keith 10 and Ian 9. We are well in the running now with 3 matches left but the
next one clashes with the first Fisho qualifier so I will need a sub.
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