My fingers were still swollen and throbbing from my accident yesterday, so fishing for Silvers wasn’t a choice. I drew peg 11. I wasn’t sure about this peg even though I have done well from it in the past. My hesitation was due to matey Martin Rayett drawing it a few times of late and has come plumb last with very low weights. The light wind was more or less directly off my back giving some wind cover to pegs 4, 5, 6 and 7 with my peg dead calm, a worry. I decided to fish the pellet waggler for some Chub and Carp to the island corner and two paste rigs – one for 4 metres and for 7 metres.
Whilst setting up panic set in, I had left my lucky red disgorger on the settee at home. Not that I am superstitious, but the question was should I go home and get it even though I had four unused replacements in the box. However, as we had only 45 minutes to set up I decided to go with a new one. I really felt uncomfortable about this.
On the whistle I started to loose feed the 4 metre line with 4 mm hard pellet and fed five or so 8’s over the island. I picked up the waggler and because of the wind could lay the line perfectly straight with the float dragging slightly toward the island. Perfect presentation, unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of room because I could only really fish the corner and the float just sat there whilst small fish nibbled the pellet. I gave up on this and had a go at 4 metres with paste and quickly lost two foul hooked Carp before I landed a 3 pounder. I had a couple more small Carp but was being pestered by Ronnie’s. Trying to catch Ronnie’s on paste is very good to improve the baiting up speed as that is all you are likely to achieve. However, Skimmers seem to hang on a little longer and that accounted for a few. Most anglers I could see were catching much more than me, so I went out at 7 metres but this time kinder potting 4’s in with the paste. I had another little run of small Skimmers before I had 4 more small carp. Then the Ronnie’s arrived. I was struggling which I put down to the dead calm. However, I usually have a really good last hour on the venue, so decide to stick to the 4 metre line for the last two hours. The struggle continued. I was then thinking that the match would be finishing an hour and a quarter earlier, so would I miss out. Panic set in and I started to up the feed and it wasn’t until the last 15 minutes that the Carp did arrive and I landed two and lost one in this short time. My net weighed 24lb 6oz for fifth in the section and two miserable points – beating Mike Jones again!! Amazingly, when the full result came in I did manage to hold on to second spot by just one point from Bob Feltham who came in third with a late run. However, if Bob had not left a 1lb Skimmer in his net he would have piped me on weight!! But if John Baker hadn’t thrown back his Skimmers on the previous match then Bob would have still been third. I would have thought both Bob and John would have the experience to know better – lessons learnt.
The question is would I have done better with my lucky disgorger?
The match was won by John Baker on peg 6 with 57lb 1oz. John caught Carp on paste at seven metres.
Martin Alexander had the fish of the series from peg 1 with a very strikingly pretty Common Carp (pictured right with Martin – Martin makes it look even prettier). The fish weighed in at 13lb 1oz.Full Result:
1. John Baker 57-01-0 peg 6
2. Bob Feltham 56-08-0 peg 5
3. Mark Tanner 42-14-0 peg 12
4. Bob Price 41-10-0 peg 9
5. Phil Coulam 33-08-0 peg 10
6. Martin Alexander 32-0-0 peg 1
Final Top Five Overall in Series (The full result can be found on the Carps AC website):
1. Kev Dicks 36 pts
2. Mike Nicholls 28 pts
3. Bob Feltham 27 pts
4. Tom Coulson 26 pts
5. Bob Price 26 pts
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