Wednesday 24/03/2010 - Carps AC - Bitterwell Lake

So Ian Huntley suffered an attempt to cut his throat whilst in prison, and he is to get £20,000 compensation – has the world had gone loopy – it should go to the inmate that that tried to kill him with a caution to try better next time!!!

It was another good turn out for this popular local venue. From lessons learnt from my last visit I made up an 11 foot Canal waggler rod with a 4BB inserted waggler the previous night for the Ronnie’s at 25 metres. I hoping this with caster would account for some of the quality Roach which can be found here. I drew peg 9 on the far bank concrete. In addition to the wag I set up a 0.3 gram Sensas Jean Desque Eric, mainly for the Skimmers at 11.5 metres at 11-o-clock. I fed this line with monster crab green micro (bought from Clive's shop). I then set about the wag and having set it at full depth I catapulted put some caster and red maggot (well sprayed). I really was expecting the float to go straight away – but not. I kept a few maggots and caster going in and varied the depth. I did have four 1oz Ronnie’s on the drop, but it really wasn’t happening. Looking around it wasn’t really happening for anyone else either. On to the Skimmer line and I had a run of six Skimmers to 1lb 8oz, which soon died, so I re-fed and tried the wag again – nothing – where were the Ronnie’s? Back on the Skimmer line and had a couple more to 1lb then I hooked a Bream of about 3lb which shed the hook at the net – Bollocks. With 1 ¾ hours to go the swim completely died so I closed it down and opened a maggot line at 1-o-clock using the same rig. I started to get a few small Ronnie’s but with a wet pole (yes, light rain all day) it was far too slow. So I set up a 4.5 metre whip and found that much quicker. I found that the Ronnie’s would disappear if you fed too heavy and I soon found out why when a carp broke me. Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of it five minutes later I hooked and landed a 3lb Carp on the whip (none elasticated). I did manage to put together about 4lb of Ronnie’s during this time which helped my Silvers weight to 13lb 12oz that added to my 3lb 6oz Carp I weighed a total of 17lb 2oz for fifth overall and second in the Silvers and a pick up of £25.

The match was won by Leyton Palmer (pictured right with his catch) on peg 12 with 29lb 6oz. Leyton caught all his fish on a pellet cage feeder with banded hard pellet on the hook.

Andy Gard (pictured bottom right with his eyes close – the poor man works nights so I am not surprised (three days without sleep - umm) won the Silvers from peg 14 with a credible 15lb 2oz of mainly quality Roach. Andy caught short on caster.

Full Result:

1. Leyton Palmer 29-06-0 peg 12
2. Martin Rayett 24-06-0 peg 10
3. Colin Golding 21-06-0 peg 13
4. Andy Gard 18-08-0 peg 14
5. Mike Nicholls 17-02-0 peg 9
6. Bob Price 16-0-0 peg 1

Top Silvers:

1. Andy Gard 15-02-0 peg 14
2. Mike Nicholls 13-12-0 peg 9