AT Commercial National, Garbolino Lakes, 23/5/15

Once again it was a big day out for Fosters team army, I had travelled up on the Friday night and stayed in one of the cabins at the lakes so I was well rested come the morning, certainly better than driving up on the morning.  We all met up before the draw, the bait was sorted, breakfast was eaten and then the wait for the pegs began. Gaz came back and gave me K1, this was on Bennies lake in the far Corner furthest from the car park.

 I had loads of room as 3 pegs on either side of me were under water, but I had the wind off my back and all I had heard was that I would need to be in the wind to do any good today. As I was setting up more and more cars drove around the lake and started to park behind me, I will remember that one next time I am there as I lugged my kit on the barrow from the other side of the lake. This however seemed to push what fish I had in front of me as I turned up further and further across the lake away from me.

The plan was pellet at 2+2, this rig was 0.16mm mainline to a 0.12mm hooklength, a B911 in size 16 and a 4X14 MW F1 Carbon, my elastic was a yellow 2.1mm Colmic elastic which is lovely and forgiving for the stamp of fish that I was expecting.

I decided to concentrate on the left margin as it looked spot on for a few fish so I plumbed up a corn and a paste rig to fish against the reeds both of these were on proper lines and hooks, and finally I also set up a couple of shallow rigs but they gave me nothing so enough about those.

I was ready well before the all in and my only regret is that I didn’t set up a feeder rod for if I had a breakage but a bit of banter with the RAF lad in the next peg and then it was away we go.

I fed a quarter of a cup of groundbait and some corn down the edge, flicked out half a dozen 4mm pellet and then shipped my pellet rig over the top with a 4mm expander on the hook, it took all of a minute for my first bite and a 12oz f1 was soon in the net and was followed by a couple or smaller samples within the first 5 minutes. It was at this point the wheels started to fall off as I started to have to work really hard for bites and considering this was supposed to be a fish race I was falling behind.  After an hour I had 15 fish so I was eyeing up the margins already, I went on them and started loose feeding caster onto the short pole line to see if I could get some silvers or if something different would work, I managed a few fish from down the edge and they were of a good stamp compared to the rest of the lake but I needed something to start working quickly.

I went back onto the short line over the caster and nothing happened at all! Now I was worried, so I fed a small ball of groundbait with some pellets on the 2+2 line and went back down the edge for a couple more fish and then I started chopping and changing between the 2 main lines after every 2 fish, as it was all I could get from 1 spot.

My swims died off more and more over the last couple of hours, I landed a barbel so put a maggot line in at 10 off to my right, I had no bites over that or indications!!  I managed 6 fish in the last hour and that included putting my paste rig into the middle of the reed bed, I didn’t lose a fish!

The all out was called and it was obvious that everyone on my side of the lake had struggled, as the scales came round I had 16.8kg, the RAF guy to my right had 10kg! There were a line of 12-15kg weights up the bank to my right until there was a small pocket of the small fish that a couple of guys shared half way up the bank to my right and they had 20Kg + each.  As the scales moved into the wind and around the spit though the weights were all over 20Kg of the small 6-10oz stockie F1’s, this was capped with a few upper 30Kg weights and a 40kg weight.

I went back to HQ and it was a tale of woe with Gus having the top points score from the worst section.

I didn’t hang around for the results but heard later that we were 22^nd out of the 24 teams, Dorking won it and Adam Richards had top weight on the day.

What would I do different

1.       I should have set up the feeder and also plumbed up a line at 13m+, although it wasn’t in the plan it may have caught me some more fish, I needed 10lb to get another point and 15lb for a few more points so I just needed a run of fish to make that happen.

Land command next let’s hope that that’s a bit better.