Sunday 25/07/2010 - Cider Farm Open

I remain amazed with how many anglers still moan about the weed growth. The answer is simple we need to live with it as they aren’t going anywhere soon. I personally think the Flora and Faunal is wonderful to fish along side. I took a couple of pictures to give emphasis to this (see pictures right) and of course there is the wildlife, the rushes are full of Weed Warblers. The Anglers have particular issue with:

Cyperaceae is a family of monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges, which superficially resemble grasses or rushes. The family is large, with some 5,500 species described in about 109 genera (Govaerts et al., 2007). These species are widely distributed, with the centers of diversity for the group occurring in tropical Asia and tropical South America. While sedges may be found growing in all kinds of situations, many are associated with wetlands, or with poor soils.
Back to the fishing Bela and I went to Shipham for breakfast only to find them closed. These people do not deserve our custom. We went back to Budgens in Churchill and had a delicious breakfast Baggett. Won’t be going back to Shipham for a while that’s for sure.

All though I have fished a few club matches here this year with the focus on Silvers, today was my first Open and an out and out Carp attack would be necessary to win coin.

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 48. A number of anglers asked me what peg I was on and when I told them the response was “Peg 49”? Not well known peg then. I knew where it was as Charlie Barns has drawn it and fished for Silvers for 7lb, then John Paige drew it and DNW’d. Arriving at the peg I was quite please with the peg with signs of fish in the bay my peg was facing, plus the wind off my back. I had already decided on an out and out paste attack. So set up one 0.4 gram rig for down the inside ledge where I found 5 ½ foot of water at 4 metres. I also set up a 0.3 gram rig for left and right hand margin. However, having set the rig at 30 inches and on plumbing up the plummet just kept rolling down the step bank until it reached the bottom of the ledge. Every where I tried I found the same. Umm, I was hoping that a piece of paste might hold up – wrong – in any case I suspect the feed would end up at the shelf bottom. I decide to focus on the 4 metre line and started by Kinder potting in some 4mm pellet with my paste and had three Carp to 6lb straight off, the fourth I tried to bully as I was expecting a fishing race – wrong – and the hook pulled. It then went iffy with the fish moving up in the water. I put all my shot under the float and fished the paste on the drop and had another three decent Carp – amazing bites. It went very quite so readjusted the shot to the logarithmic pattern and soaked up some 10 mm pellet so that they were nice and fluffy. I started again regularly loose feeding a single piece over the float and caught Carp steady on paste to the end with no lost fish to the reeds! I weighed 75lb 15oz for 4th overall and a section win. One of my nets was 1lb 7oz short of the maximum single net limit of 70lb!

The match was won by Lewis Jones (pictured right) with 88lb 10oz from peg 46. Lewis caught most of his fish shallow over to the RH rope anchor on banded 6mm pellet over the same loose fed.

Close runner up was Chris Whitham (pictured lower right on peg 41 - don't ask) with 85lb 10oz from peg 40. Chris caught on paste short and corn over to the RH bare bank.

No Silvers winner here – yet!!

Full Result:

1. Lewis Jones 88-10-0 peg 46
2. Chris Whitham 85-10-0 peg 40
3. Pete Sivell 81-13-0 peg 20
4. Mike Nicholls 75-15-0 peg 48
5. Dave Roper 73-0-0 peg 7
6. Dave Cockayne 72-01-0 peg 56