With Rip Off away on holiday Colin Ball (Triggers “Real”
name in Only Fools and Horses) stood in for him as match organiser (pictured
right studying his form book). I over heard Trigger sorting out the match peg
fees with Nick Duckett and Trigger worked out that 15 x £6 peg fees would cost
him £75. Next year Trigger we will be millionaires! That said things ran fairly
smoothly.
In to the draw tin and out comes peg 11. Perfect for me as I
was all geared up for a days Silver fishing with GB and this peg has delivers a
few of these species over the years. I don’t do pleasure fishing nor do I
practice but I do like to try new approaches which has to be done during
matches, the best place I think.
The plan was to fish GB on the hook over GB and various hook
baits. After all fish eat GB don’t they. So I set up a 4x14 jolly set up for
various baits and a 0.5 gram paste and corn float for the GB all to be fished at
10 metres at 1-o-clock. I decided to lash out £7 on a 900 gram bag of GB –
Marukyu EFG 130 to be used on the hook fished over my usual Skimmer mix. The way
I attach the GB to the hook is by taking a small piece of fish meal paste and
roll it in the GB a bit like bread crumbing food. On the whistle I fed one ball
of GB (careful start). I was expecting some nibbling first put in but nothing
happened. I increased the GB feed and at last a bite, alas not, but a foul
hooked Bream which came off. I had another three foul hooked Bream. I looked at
the watch and I had spent 1 ½ hours playing around with the GB and nothing in
the net. So time for the Jolly and with a 3mm expander on the hook I started to
catch Ronnie’s, which wasn’t the plan as I was after the big Skimmers. I tried
everything on the hook with maggot again catching Ronnie’s and one foul hooked
Bream which did get in the keep net. Corn produced one F1 (a proper F1). With
half the match gone I had 5lb 7oz in Silvers. I had given it long enough.
I will be trying this out again next week down Viaduct on
the Thursday cost cutter.
Listening to the talk going around I was on average 10 Carp
behind so was well behind, but I decided to set up a margin paste rig to be
fished down to empty pallet on peg 12 again at a comfortable 10 metres. I
started by catching some small Carp 1 to 3lb, but with a hour to go I had five
consecutive 10lb Common Carp with the fish really starting to feed with my last
fish being foul hooked which I lost somewhere near gimps peg 13. I ended the
match with six Carp in each of my three nets for a total of 96lb 9oz. Adding my
meagre Silvers catch I managed to total 102lb recovering some dignity. YES if I had fished for Carp all day I would have finished higher in the match!!
After the match Leon
Hubbard told me Beany had been in my peg on the Saturday match and had filled
in the swim with micro pellet using his huge conical
comical cup which wouldn’t look out of place on his head with a big D on it!
The match was won by Craig Edmonds (pictured right with the
default Silvers winner) with 155lb 12oz from Specimen Lake
peg 25. Craig caught out in front using banded pellet over loose fed hard 4’s
which accounted for most of his Silvers and later up the end margin using 8mm meat
catching 60 lb of big Carp in the last hour.
The Silvers default winner caught mainly F1’s fishing expander
pellet over micro pellet at 13 metres.
Full Result:
- Craig Edmonds 155-12-0 peg 25
- Paul Elmes 131-03-0 peg 17
- Scott Puddy 116-14-0 peg 1
- Mike Nicholls 102-0-0 peg 11
- Simon Rayall 87-07-0 peg 19
- Gordon Cannings 85-03-0 peg 5
Top Silvers:
- Craig Edmonds 21-07-0 peg 25
- Clint Wojtyle 18-12-0 peg 29
- John Bradford 18-07-0 peg 13
Weigh Sheet: