AAF Individual Championship, Day 1, Heronbrook Fishery

This was it the main event the AAF Individual Championship, I was actually quite unprepared for this match even after spending the night before refreshing hooklengths and re tying a few floats.  I was quite late in the draw queue and ended up on peg 38 of Canal.

Both margins were good with a bush to my left at 11.5m where it was 2ft deep, I would fish paste over pellet and dead maggot there, the right I found a hole at 2+2 that was a foot deeper than around it, as it was so deep I was fishing meat over hemp and meat there.  I also plumbed up a paste rig at 2+2 so that I had somewhere to start and end the match and finally I again set up a rig for fishing shallow with caster across.

I had to hope that one or more of those lines would come good as I had Gaz and Danny around the culvert to my right and the end peg to my left looked dangerous so anything better than 4^th in section would be good but to be honest I would need a section win to stand a chance of a trophy.

Anyway, at the all-in I shipped out the paste rig again and then started feeding the caster line hoping that I could start to line up some F1’s or Carp for later, anyway after 30 minutes or so I had a couple of decent F1’s in the bag but it wasn’t setting the world on fire so I went on the shallow line, a chub of nearly a pound first put in was a false dawn as again I had to start to work at trying to find how to string some fish together.  A few chub and a couple of f1’s were my reward for a few hours work and at the 3 hour mark I started to feed the edges and had another look on the paste line.

Nothing seemed to be working until I shipped down my right hand edge and the float buried with a small barbel on 6mm meat, I instantly upped the hook size and hooklength to allow me to get the fish in quicker and managed a run of small barbel, to try and improve the swim I gave it a quarter of a big cup of meat and then went under the tree to my left.  I had indications straight away and managed a carp of around 5-6lb but then small fish moved in so I topped it up with a full pot of dead maggot and micros and went down the other side. 

This is basically how I finished my day rotating between the three inside lines for a few more barbel and decent edge carp and I actually made a half decent come back, I say comeback as I had been watching Gaz on the peg next to me empty it across on pellet and Danny had managed a few aswell.  Come the end I had 37kg odd for third in section behind Danny on 40kg+ and Gaz on 52Kg.  It was better than I had expected but just a few more edge or paste fish may have tipped it in my favour, always tomorrow for a comeback though.

What would I do different?

I should have realised what Gaz was doing earlier and possibly followed suite, the other option would have been caster under the bushes to my left and pellet to the bare bank.

I needed another paste line that I would have left alone for at least 3 hours.

Tackle used:

Pole, Paste edge and Short:

Elastic: Colmic Red Hollow Edge

Line: 0.19mm powerline to 0.18mm Cenex

Hook: 5 Tubertini 175,

Float: Margin, KC Carpa Margin Paste 4X10, Short Dino Paste 0.2g

Margin Meat:

Elastic: Colmic Red Hollow Edge

Line: 0.19mm powerline to 0.18mm Cenex

Hook: 3 Tubertini 175,

Float: Drennan Carp 3 in 0.4g

Shallow:

Elastic: White Hydro

Line: 0.19mm powerline to 0.12mm Cenex

Hook: 20 Guru Pellet waggler with a bait band

Float: Drennan Crystal dibber 0.2g