Sunday 08/09/2019 - Windmill Open - Match Lake

It was nice to John Osborne back fishing commercials after his rehab on the river. However, not sure it worked - spot the difference in the photograph right - rhymes with clue!! 

Disappointing numbers with ten anglers. At least we will all have plenty of room. Personally I prefer every peg in. I was fancying pegs 2 or 20.

Last but one into the draw bag (where's the wooden box?) and outcomes golden peg 14. Oh, no the curse of the golden peg. Every time I have drawn a golden peg on this venue I have come second. Still I went to the peg smiling, albeit a little apprehension due to Dave Willmott struggling last Thursday.

Decided to have a go for the Gold so no Silver fishing today. Just two paste floats one to fish top-set plus four sections of the Drennan margin pole down to the edge of the Sedges with the 25 Drennan elastic (love this stuff - not for the faint hearted - best not foul hook). The other to fish just the top-set with the Middy blue 18-20 bungee (last forever). There appears to be a lot of small Carp over by the island so set up a light pellet waggler. After feeding Spottedfin Carp GB down the long edge and one pot of wetted micro on the short line I tried the waggler for 15 minutes with plenty of swirling but no bites - really strange, I couldn't afford to waste too much time on this, so it was retired for the rest of the day. Started down the long edge with paste where the carp were already swirling. It

wasn't long before I caught my first Carp which was of the small variety. I stayed down this edge cupping in GB regularly catching small Carp - I estimated I had 8 for 20 lb! However, I didn't want to miss the start of the bigger fish on the short line so regularly tested it with paste whilst hand feeding hard 4's. I did have 5 accidental big Skimmers from both lines, which gave me the confidence that the bigger Carp would show - eventually! In fact it took until the last 2 hours before I had my first Carp on the top-set. I kept hand feeding fours but had to be careful as the carp would come up intercepting them leading to foul hooking. The last hour was the most productive  catching some decent Carp with the beautiful scale perfect Common pictured right nearly taking the scales to 20 lb, luckily wasn't yet big enough for the Speci Lake so was returned. I felt I had fished the swim out by time the all out came and had done my best to become golden.

My accidental Silvers weighed 13 lb 11 oz and my Carp 122 lb 15 oz for a total of 136 lb 10 oz for another curse of the golden peg second overall!! But did enjoy the focus on the Carp today. So my record of the golden curse continues.
Unfortunately peg 20 was to do the business today occupied by Craig Challingsworth (pictured right with the runner up and Silvers winner) with a massive 184 lb 6 oz. Craig caught long and down his edge on banded pellet over pellet.
The Silvers was won by Dave Haines (pictured right with his catch) with 22 lb 1 oz from peg 16. Dave caught on single caster over loose fed caster. Nice to see these fish lets keep them away from the the Black Death soon to arrive.

How come I can see videos and reports on the France national team in this weekend's world championship but nothing what's so ever on England. Wake up Angling Trust get your act together.

Result:

1. Craig Challingsworth 184-06-0 peg 20
2. Mike Nicholls 136-10-0 peg 14
3. Dave Willmott 135-05-0 peg 22

Silvers:

1. Dave Haines 22-01-0 peg 16
2. Mike Nicholls 13 -11-0 peg 14

Weigh Sheet: