Not been fishing for four weeks for various reasons. So at last had a chance to go to the Alcove match at Whitehouse Farm. Both Georges and Margret's were both in the draw, both have been throwing up some big Carp weights especially George's peg 1. The Carp are mostly double figures and too big for me to wrestle with in the landing net these days especially with the water levels down. If I drew the peg I would still have go though it's in the DNA, but hoping to avoid the known Carp pegs.
The match was split into two with top 3 and 1 silvers on each lake.
But first had to follow instructions and pick my annual helping of the Special One's Blackberries for her pies. So with mission accomplished it was Into the draw bag and peg 8 (pictured) on Margret's for me. For company on the next peg 9 was matey Andy Gard - now a serial match angler who does more miles than an Uber driver. Had this peg before and always fished for small Ronnie's of which there are millions add the millions of tiny Perch it's a bit of a physical effort in this hot weather. I had bought some worms but had left them home - hope they're OK, so only had LR's and Paste. So went for the waggler to fish for the Chub and a paste rig - simple.
It's very wide to the island on this peg but had waggler's that could do it, but would not be able to loose feed it, so settled for an 8" Drake bodied waggler. With the water level really low had just 4 and a bit foot of water. So a 0.4 gram PC paste rig with yellow top selected. That was it so had 45 minutes to hang around for the 10 o clock start - a few more Blackberries it was then.
Having mixed my paste and making a right mess of my trousers fed the paste line at 10 metres with micro and the waggler line as far as the catty and wind conditions would allow - about half way!! No wind can be worse than a side wind for loose feeding.
Started on the waggler with double DR and had a 1 1/2 lb Gold fish fan tail second cast. Good start. Then it was the usual small Ronnie's and Perch afterwards. Occasionally I was getting the complete ragging of the maggots which I'm sure were Chub. Didn't connect with any though, smashing the hook bait on the way down me thinks. Shallowed up to no avail. I had planned to leave the paste until I saw some fizz, but tried it anyway and was surprised to catch a 2lb Skimmer first try. I then had problems with the platform being too far off the water, the elastic being too strong and shipping back into bushed and jamming up causing the loss of a couple of Skimmers. Switched to a lighter elastic and adjustment of the pole roller helped considerably. Had a couple of hours picking off the odd better Skimmer and one F1. The peg was by now showing a lot of fizz caused by tiny Skimmers which were becoming a nuisance they are hard enough to catch on natural baits let alone paste. Had a common and Mirror Carp both about 5 lb each which herald the end of the Skimmers fishing. So upped the feed to try and catch more Carp alas only one lost foul hooker. On hindsight wish I had rested the line in favour of the waggler for a while, think the extra feed buggered it up. Struggled the last hour which I spent catching small silvers on the Waggler.
The two Carp weighed 10 lb 4 oz and my silvers 18 lb 7 oz for a total weight of 28 lb 11 oz and the lake silvers win. Our side of the lake wasn't fishing that well so pleased with my result - bollocks to worms. To be fair a nice day's fishing and the Special One thought the Blackberries were excellent.
Pete Watkins (pictured with the lakes silvers winner) won our lake with 76 lb 5 oz from peg 17. It took the last hour to catch, starting with a 20 pounder. Kev caught down his left hand margin using double corn
Over to George's where the lake record was nearly broken by Kev Murch (pictured) who weighed an impressive 155 lb 14 oz from peg 1. A;ll pole caught - well done Matey.
Bill Knight picked up the silvers on George's from peg 13 with 14 lb 2 oz. You will no doubt read more of today's exploits by visiting "Billy's Blog" which is always an excellent crafted blog - very enjoyable read. Just google it.
PS: John Amato didn't get his net bag back which fell off his new motor bike last match - luckily the dog wasn't in it.
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