It was Wetherspoons Hanham for breakfast with Geoff this
morning where we met up with Ray B and Paul H – nice and hot.
The venue has been fishing well from selected swims for the
new arrivals. Because pleasure anglers don’t like walking far pegs 11, 10, 9
and 8 were the pegs I was hoping for.
Nineteen fishing so room for a few more. Into the draw bag
and out comes disc 24. This is a strange peg, being all or nothing, but
generally happy with it, but had some concerns on the how clear the water was. Most
probably due to all the rain over previous days. The format was different today
with the match being split into two halves with a Carp weigh in at half time. I
was apprehensive about this, but as it turned out found it acceptable. In fact at half
time I was able to make up a Carp rig. The Banana walk was replaced with Banana
weigh in.
Because of the change I decided to split my match in to two.
First half focus on Silvers and the second Carp. I set up the Ronnie rig, a
light 6 inch Drake bodied waggler, a 4x12 to fish over to the far bank in three foot
of water which was only top-set plus three and a bit, finally a 4x16 to fish to my left at full depth . The first half didn’t
go too well, I caught some Skimmers over GB on the full depth rig for about 30
minutes until it completely died even though there was some pimpling visible, all I could catch was tiny Perch. Swim abandoned. Had a go over to the far bank
and had one small F1 and two Ronnie’s. Time to try the Ronnie rig with maggot
over maggot, which resulted in two Ronnie’s one being 10 oz. As we know the
venue lacks any numbers of small Ronnie’s so that was it from my favourite rig.
Time for the waggler fished down the left side of the island with maggot over
maggot catching another two small F1’s loosing a near 2lb Perch at the net,
another couple of Ronnie and a 1 ½ lb Skimmer. That was it until the first Carp
weigh in which I recorded my three F1’s at 2lb 14oz. Well behind.
My focus switched to Carp feeding the far bank swim
with hard fours. Started a new margin swim down to my right, to be precise
behind me, kindering hard fours with some micro I wanted to use up. First try
over the new swim I landed a 4lb Carp on 4mm expander. I then had a run of four
quick F1’s then a 18lb 8oz Mirror which boast my anticipation of making the top
three. However, because we have to weigh these larger fish in and return immediately
it flipped over and broke my top-set – bugger. A few more 4 to 6lb Carp
followed before it slowed so tried over to the Island with 4mm expander and caught two more F1’s. I think I was catching all
the F1’s that were in my vicinity because the bites were instant. Back down the
margin where I was rewarded by a 3lb Tench. I knew it was a Tench by it’s
fighting pattern.
My Silvers weighed 8 lb 2 oz and my total Carp weighed 48 lb
12 oz for a second overall weight of 57 lb 8 oz. On reflection I ‘m sure I
wouldn’t have added much to my Silvers weight had I continued to fish for them.
Also I might have caught more Silvers in the first half fishing the waggler in
the deeper open water.
Come the last hour I got very cold due to the NE winds blowing in at me. When is the weather going to improve - ever?
Come the last hour I got very cold due to the NE winds blowing in at me. When is the weather going to improve - ever?
The match was won by Tony Rixon (pictured upper right with half
his catch) who out gunned us all fishing 17 metres over to the opposite island.
Tony is the only won BIG enough to handle this length. Tony weighed 80 lb 1 oz
from peg 28 with a 50/50 catch across the two halves. This shows that those
with the fish in front of them will continue catching even though there is a
mid-match weigh in. See Tony’s blog for further details.
The Silvers was won by Paul Barnfield (pictured right with
the Silvers runner up) with 18lb 12oz. Paul once again moaned on some late big
Skimmer from peg 4.
The usual suspects went back to the pub where it was
apparent Geoff Francis is finding retirement hard as he kept nodding off!
Result:
- Tony Rixon 80-01-0 peg 28
- Mike Nicholls 57-08-0 peg 24
- Harry Muir 47-09-0 peg 11
Silvers:
- Paul Barnfield 18-12-0 peg 4
- Dave Gillard 17-15-0 peg 16
- Geoff Francis 15-06-0 peg 29
Weigh Sheet:
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