Sunday 01/08/2021 - Tony Rixon's Float Only - Round Five - Todber Manor - Homeground and Hillview

Travelled with the second oldest anger fishing today, Martin McMahon. We stopped in Greggs Shaftsbury to be welcomed by an aggressive young girl who made it clear we were 9 minutes too early and had to wait outside the shop - some training required me thinks.

Both Martin and me weren't looking forward to it because of the massive weights that have been coming out - not our preferred type of fishing. I had given the match some thought and had a plan. Fish for Carp on the flyers and Silvers elsewhere, but would prefer a draw on Homeground.

Tony had sensibly reduced the match to 5 hours allowing more time for weighing in, also most anglers only own 6 nets or less!! John Candy's keep net sells have significantly increased.

Into the draw tin and out comes Hillview peg 56 section end peg which went round to the LH side of the spit to peg 51 so I had a good section winning peg. My peg made better by end peg 55 empty so plenty of room. However, there were plenty of Ronnie's topping. So I had a dilemma, Silvers or Carp? After a great deal of thought I decided to let the fish lead me.

The set up was the short Ronnie rig, a 0.4 gram paste float to fish out in front on top set and a RJ paste bullet for the LH margin. In the process dropped a box of paste in the Lake, so wouldn't have enough for the entire match - bugger, but wasn't to matter. 

Fed the paste lines with micro, starting shallow on the Ronnie rig with single caster over half dozen loose fed caster. First try, one Ronnie then one fell off. The Carp had heard the casters going in and landed two decent one's. Now thinking Carp so picked up the bullet with paste which got absolutely hammered by Ronnie's. So now thinking Silvers, so put the casters back in the bag, switching to DR's on the Ronnie rig again over loose fed DR's and was soon getting 1/2 to 2 oz Ronnie or Perch every few seconds. I then had what I initially thought was a Carp but was delighted to see a 2 1/2 Perch in the net. This decided me to totally commit to Silvers. However, the occasional Carp arrived which was very obvious because the Ronnie's disappeared replaced by Perch which stayed. It didn't take long to fish the Carp out, which was usually in pairs and the Ronnie's to reappear. I did loose quite a few Carp including a near 15 lb Common Carp. And that's how my match went. I wish I had brought some GB thinking it would have been less attractive to the Carp and might have attracted some Skimmers which were absent from the keep net today.

My 400 odd Silvers weighed 25 lb 14 oz for the Silvers win and a new personal best of 107 lb 11 oz of Accidental Carp. I fed about 1 pint of DR's including the wet escapees. Definitely a section winning peg if I focused on the Carp, but definitely not an overall framer for me physically, so the fish made the right decision for me.

Very enjoyable day, apart from the monsoon just before the end.

The match was won by Neil Mercer (pictured with some of his catch and the Silvers winner) with a new PB of 400 lb 5 oz from peg 58. Neil caught on 6 mm banded pellet over loose fed 4's, initially at top set plus one barrel and later switching to just his top set, both lines were fished in front. Three Pints of 4's did it for him, well done Matey.

Note for future: Don't let Clint Wojtyla see you using paste next to him, if he asks tell him it's corn he wont know the difference! Joking aside, credit where credit is due Clint has done a great job supporting and bringing his young lad Freddie on who fished a tidy match today. Well done Freddie keep it up.

Result:

Weigh Sheets: