We had decided that we would enter this event as Fosters
Team Army and we had a half decent team for the event even with a few people
having to swap for a variety of reasons. A few of us spent the night in
Stafford so went out for a curry the night before and we were all discussing
the best way to approach the venues. I knew that I would be on Cudmore and the
common concensus was that I would need chopped worm and caster to catch
everything that swims, and then make up the rest on the day. Gaz and myself went
down nice and early in the morning to get to the front of the queue. We both
managed a breakfast before the main rush and then settled down for the day
ahead, the draw saw me on A13 and this was Arena lake, now most people approach
has changed to this lake since the international events have been on it and I
was told to start on the method then look for worm fish before coming in down the edge in the closing stages. Ok I
thought lets see how this will pan out.
As I was setting up there were numbers of fish slurping
in the surface film so I was fancying it a bit, but I decided to set up the
following as quietly as possible:
A method rod for across,
A shallow rig for 13-14.5m,
A worm rig for 7m,
A paste rig for 7m,
An edge rig that was plumed to 11.5m to my right for a
groundbait line and 2+2 to my left for a meat line,
And finally a dobbing rig to try and mug a fish early.
This and all my bait prep did not take long so I was soon
walking around chatting to the rest of the team at Cudmore, I had time for a
brew and it was a thoroughly chilled out time leading up to the match, I was
sat on my box ready for the all-in and as it was called I shipped out with a
worm rich ball of groundbait for the worm line and half a pot of hemp, pellet
and paste for the other short line. I then tried to dob one of the carp that
had been lingering but they soon disappeared so out went the method, I was
quite surprised when the tip started to bounce on the first cast and a small skimmer
was soon panned. Happy that I had not blanked out went the feeder again and
this time I couldn’t sink the line before the tip went round and a small tench
ended up in the keepnet. This had been a really good start but this is when the
wheels fell off as all I could get on the method were tiny skimmers, so I had a
look on the worm line and caught tiny perch, the paste and shallow lines seemed
fishless so I was stuck and kept trying to put a few small skimmer sinto the
net. This seemed like a bad plan when a few carp started coming in around me
and they seemed to be shallow across so I got off my box and quickly set up a
bomb rod to fish a zig in the far margin, this still saw no action with two and
a half hours left to push I started to feed my margins more heavily trying to
make something happen. After thirty minutes and around 3 hours into the match
my meat margin rig buried and carp number 1 was soon in the net, it was around
2Kg so worth at least two of some of the other fish that I had seen get caught. It was however, a false dawn and the next
hour and a half saw me start to rotate on the carp lines mainly concentrating
on the margins and the paste line as these were where I thought I could claw something
back.
With half an hour to go I was proved right as I shipped
onto te paste line and the float buried after 45 seconds with carp number 2 on,
this was followed by number 3 and then in the last 10 minutes I managed another
2 for a grand total of 5 carp come the all-out. As it turned out this was not
too bad and Simon Fry who I had for company to my left managed to weigh in 8Kg,
I managed 14Kg, the guy to my right had 16Kg and it transpired that there were
a few 15-17Kg weights so one more fish could have seen me win my sub section of
5.
Back at the clubhouse the general consensus was not good,
Gaz had managed 14points, I had 10 and the rest of the team all had single
digits.
As you can see we ended up 15 out of 19 teams on the day
and once again Drennan Barnsley Blacks walked away with the trophy.
Two weeks to recover and then the Inter Corps so we shall
have to see what I can get up to in the meantime, I fancy a river carp or 2.
WHAT I WOULD
HAVE DONE DIFFERENT:
I would have had a bomb and pellet wag set up just in
case.
I would fish to my strengths more rather than following the
trends.
I would have fed the method line with 8mm pellet to try
and attract a few better fish onto it.
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