Wednesday 24/11/2010 - Carps AC - Christmas Match - Plantation Fishery

The Royal Wedding has been confirmed as 29 April 2011 and a bank holiday decreed. The Special One is already planning for it, as I am. I will be doing the same thing as the last Royal wedding – going fishing.

Plantation has a good head of both Carp and Silvers (particularly Ronnie’s) and is a venue I always look forward to. Unfortunately the banks are not what you would expect from a commercial fishery. I drew peg 7 and it took me 20 minutes to find a suitable position for my seat box, when I did it was under a tree and on some soft bank. It was difficult and uncomfortable to say the least. The picture top right say’s it all. But the irony is that the car park has a mound of chippings, if the owner had provided a wheel barrow and shovel I would have been happy to have back filled the swim, however, there would have been a queue. Come on fishery owner sort this easy one out.

I set up one Skimmer rig a 4x14 Jolly to be fished at 11.5 metres in 3 foot of water at 2 o clock and 10 o clock where it was 3 inches deeper. The lake gets deeper the further to the left you go. I also set up two Ronnie rigs one shallow and the other at full depth. On the all in put in two 125ml cups of GB in at 2 o clock and some micro and 2 mm expander on the other skimmer line. I started on double dead red over the GB whilst loose feeding the

Ronnie line with caster. I caught small Ronnie’s straight away, plus a bonus 1 ½ lb Skimmer. However, I thought the long pole was a bit too slow for catching any numbers of Ronnie so decided to switch to the shallow Ronnie rig, which accounted for nought. I added the 3 inches and put on a 4 mm expander and caught more small Ronnie’s – not going to plan as I did expect to catch a few Crucians on this line. So I tried the full depth Ronnie rig and caught Ronnie’s to 8oz for about an hour, after which it slowed so I had another round on the GB and pellet lines with just a few Ronnie’s and a couple of 4 oz Skimmers to show for it. So I decided to persevere with the full depth Ronnie rig to the end, however, the fish kept disappearing. Once the light started to go (last 15 minutes of the match) I had a 2lb Skimmer and a 1 lb Ronnie. I was hampered all match by the tree I was sat under, catching it at least ten times and having to climbing up it once to retrieve my rig – to Charlie Barns amusement. I must have retied a new hook half a dozen times. I weighed 15lb 7oz for 5th in the Silvers, that bloody tree costing me coin as I was 5oz out from picking up coin!

The match and the Silvers were won by Tom Thick (pictured upper right with his Silvers catch) with 98lb 2oz from peg 17. Tom caught on his usual soft pellet over pellet fished at 13 metres out in front.

As Tom took the over match the Silvers went to Rich Coles (pictured right with his catch) with 23lb 8oz of Skimmers and Crucians from peg 13. Rich fished similar to tom with soft pellet hook bait.

As I said I was pushed out of the Silvers by 5oz by Mike Owens who weight was helped by three big Perch. The pictured lower right shows Mike hiding the tail of his biggest - a near 3 pounder – nice fish.


Full Result:

1. Tom Thick 98-02-0 peg 17
2. Chris Davis 83-11-0 peg 8
3. Derek Vowles 42-08-0 peg 5
4. Rich Coles 29-12-0 peg 13
5. Bill Ferris 22-02-0 peg 3
6. Leyton Palmer 20-13-0 peg 25

Top Silvers:

1. Tom Thick 36-08-0 peg 17
2. Rich Coles 23-08-0 peg 13
3. Steve Dawson 16-10-0 peg 29