Monday, 29 June 2009

  • Alders Farm 27th June 09

    I had planned this annual match into my match calender since the original idea had been muted. John Buxton and the lads from Disabled-angler.com has for many years been supporting many charities, raising thousands of pounds along the way.

    This match was a pairs match. One on the silver lake the other on the match lake, 5 pegs on the match lake being in the silver lake section (a distinct advantage for anyone drawing it). My partner was Vic Nugent, a good friend, workmate and regular travelling companion. I had been placed on the match lake, with Vic fishing the silver.

    After a bacon sandwich in the cafe, we met up with a few of the other GOT lads and was chatting about the previous days match and what the winning weights and methods were. Gary Thorpe had struggled on peg 27 albeit still winning his section. Madd had performed well from peg 36 and found the fish close in. It had been a pellet match on the day with a lot of the pasteheads not catching as well as they had hoped. So pellet it was then.

    At the draw Vic walked up and pulled out our 2 pegs for the next five hours. Peg 15 on the silver lake for Vic and peg 27 on the match lake for me. A quick chat with Gaz. Gary also said to Vic that he had drawn a good area so we set off to our respective pegs full of hope and trying to achieve a top four place. Our previous best finish was 5th.

    I had no one in peg 26 today so I could fish to the platform at 9m and feed a line at 4m down the edge keeping both areas seperate. Another line at 12m and a line at 10m at 2 o'clock saw me have four lines set up and raring to go. Rigs were kept simple with MW margin floats to .16 Colmic stream and size 16 B911 hooks shotted with 2 number 8 shot and a single no 10 stotz dropper, this was the two margin rigs sorted. On the longer lines I set up 2 MW pellets floats to .14 Colmic Stream and again B911 size 16s to fish into 3ft of water.

    Bait today was pellet,pellet and more pellet both for feed and hook. Expanders pumped and dusted in atomic corn.

    At the all in a large pot of pellet were deposited on all lines with a few expanders mixed in. A look onto the 12m line saw the float dip and nothing, out again and the same thing happened. A third put in with atomic expanders saw the float bury and a small rudd soon graced my keepnet. Rudd on the line was not a good sign so I had a look onto the 9m line in front of the platform as this had started to cloud up. A sure sign of feeding fish. After 3 small carp from the paltform the swim died and i re-fed another pot to try to lure the fish back.At this point I dropped a pole winder off my tray and whilst getting it off the floor noticed a couple of tails rooting in the grass on the 4m line. Too good an opportunity to pass up, so on with the 4m margin rig and after a couple missed bites i finally connected with a carp around 3lb. I had been feeding by hand regular amounts of feed and the swim just seemed to be getting better. After around 2 hours I was onto a good weight and hoping to beat my previous best match weight of 138lb from Alders. Then for no apparent reason the fish were no more. No tails, swirls, vortexes or anything. I had been feeding regularly and in the same spot all the time so made decision to fish a metre away from the feed thinking that the fished had backed off further away. A couple of small stockies came but nothing mind blowing. A move to metre away from the bank saw a few more fish grace the net and it was a case of just plugging away. The guy on 28 had now started to get a few fish from the end of the bush on paste. Better fish from the look of it and if he carried on in the same vein I would be up against it. I kept changing lines and snatching odd fish from all my lines and although not setting the world on fire, kept in touch fish for fish with my neighbour until the last hour when he managed to snag a few lumps from his paste swim. I had fed 12 pints of pellets on my 4 lines and felt that I had got the best from the swim. Gary had had 78lb from it the day before so there was not a lot of fish in the swim and if I could beat that I would be happy.

    When the scales came round it had fished well with both pegs 3 and 4 both recording 200lb weight with a few 100lb weights. My 91lb 8oz was good enough for 10points on the day and with Vic scoring an excellent 5points from his peg on the silver lake and 3rd on the lake. Only losing the lake by 2lb. It was that close, one fish.

    Our 15 points was only good enough for 5th on the day, equalling our previous best. Winners on the day were Gary Thorpe and Trevor Price with 8 points.

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