Wednesday 27/10/2010 - Carps AC - Bitterwell Lake

This was my first visit to Bitterwell Lake since last winter. After the usual wait for Clive to open the gates it was first in to the draw bucket for me and out comes peg 11 – again. It can be a good Skimmer peg as it is one of the deepest swims with 6 foot. Because of the high turn out the pegs were really tight, having only 5 metres between me a Nick Davidson. I set up the usual Ronnie whip to use with caster and a 4x14 Jolly with 0.1 hook length and a 18 - 808 to use with the usual Skimmer baits I elected to fish at 10 metres with swims at 11 o clock and 2 o clock, well away from Nick. It was a good job, as on the whistle Nick started to bombard the 10 metres line with caster and maggot. I fed the 11 o clock line with Cats and Dog’s crushed green micro to fish 3 mm expander over and kinder potted in dead red maggot with caster at 2 o clock. I tried the pellet line, but as I said it was far too close to Nick’s bomb site, hence resulted in no bites. I went over the 2 o clock line with double dead red and had a run of Skimmers, about five to 1lb. On the hour mark the swim died even through I kept topping up with caster and maggot. The answer - the Carp had moved in, and I was soon playing a 2 pounder. At this juncture I should have changed over and fished for them, by upping the line and feed but as I was winning the Silvers I decided to stick with them, switching to the maggot and caster on the 4 metre whip I did add about 2lb on this method but it was hard going. So back out at 10 metres where I had I dire middle two hours feeding lightly catching the odd decent Ronnie, whist watching Colin and Leyton Palmer catch Carp. I did have a few more Skimmers towards the end, but with half hour to go the Carp moved in again so I fished for them landing three small ones and loosing five!! My last fish was a 2lb Skimmer landed on the whistle which was my saviour, sneaking me in the coin. My four Carp weighed a meagre 13lb 2oz and my Silvers 10lb 8oz for a not so grand total of 23lb 10oz. This put me sixth overall and second in the Silvers.

The match was won by Leyton Palmer (see video of his weigh in bootom left – keep the volume low if you don’t want to listen to some swearing) with 51lb 5oz from peg 9. Leyton caught 15ish Carp on corn over potted (big pot) casters fished at 13 metres.

The Silvers was won by Andy Gard (pictured right with his superb catch) from peg 4 with 14lb of quality Roach. Andy fished at 5 metres shallow with maggot hook bait fished over loose fed caster.

Full Result:

1. Leyton Palmer 51-05-0 peg 9
2. Colin Golding 48-04-0 peg 8
3. Steve Jefferies 38-07-0 peg 7
4. Nick Davidson 37-06-0 peg 10
5. Mike Snudden 34-08-0 peg 12
6. Mike Nicholls 23-10-0 peg 11

Top Silvers:

1. Andy Gard 14-0-0 peg 4
2. Mike Nicholls 10-08-0 peg 11