Thursday 22/10/2015 - Harescombe Fishery - Cost Cutter - Match Lake

I picked up Two Pots Bailey this morning and got a bollocking for being early; true I was – 4 minutes!! Not a morning person I think. Took on the Ring Road and won arriving reasonably early to Two Pots distain.

After breakfast into the draw bag and out comes peg 20. No emotion. Dropped off Glenn and parked behind my peg – useful that. I found myself next to Rich Heatley again and on the other side was Julian Pinkett, who has JULIAN emblazed on the back of his coat, I guess it’s in case he forgets his name. Found myself opposite Two Pots, now slimmed down to one Pot!

Set up just the two rigs – a 4x10 Yoof for the down wind RH margin, I knew it would also suit the far bank depth if I decided to fish there. And of course the 4x14 Jolly to fish at top-set plus 1 ½ sections again down wind at 1 o clock. Simple.

All the hook baits was to be 4mm meat (fyi Rich) fished over pellet. I started by putting a half pot of pellet into the RH margin. I started by picking up the Jolly and kindering in some caster and micro. With 4mm meat on the hook nothing happened, whilst Rich next door was bagging over to the far bank. After 45 minutes I could only account for eight F1’s. I tried the full range of hook bait in the bag, Caster, Semi-hard pellet and the humble Maggot. Plenty of bites from micro fish, at least I think it was small fish, nonetheless nothing to weigh in. I started to catapult some hard 4’s over to the far bank wooden piling whilst I tries the margin to no avail. So bugger into the rod holdall and found another five carbon tubes to take the rig out to 13 metres. Again with meat hook bait (fyi Rich) I commenced to catch small Mirror and Common Carp plus a couple of Chub and one Barbel. The wind wasn’t cold but not conducive for fishing long and it wasn’t long before the shoulders threw the towel in even though I was catching regularly, it was the double unshipping that done it. I spent the rest of the match in the margin with meat hook bait (fyi Rich) over loose fed pellet. I did have a purple spell catching some decent F1’s with a smattering of Skimmers.

The scale came round (pictured upper right) which has gone metric weighing (I have converted to pounds for us purist) and I was surprised to weigh 47lb 10oz which put me second overall.

Tony Rixon beat me for first place (pictured right with the runner up) with 55lb 10oz from end peg 25. Tony caught on hard pellet…see his blog for the finer details.

Two Pots came fourth one out of the coin, caching three big F1’s on paste!!

Full Result:

1. Tony Rixon 25.72 Kg (56lb 10oz) peg 25
2. Mike Nicholls 21.62Kg (47lb 10oz) peg 20
3. Kevin Jefferies 18.26Kg (40lb 4oz) peg 15
4. Rich Heatley 14.48Kg (31lb 15oz) peg 19
5. Glenn Bailey 14.02Kg (30lb 15oz) peg 10
6. Ray Cooper 13.32Kg (29lb 6oz) peg 3

Weigh Sheets (dopey buggers left the proper weigh sheet in the café):