Wednesday morning and the annual short pole match on Campbell lake, maximum pole length top set plus 3 sections, and no shipping on allowed. After the previous day we were all hoping for a draw on the near bank and the bottom corners, as from pegs 121 to 128 was a struggle the previous day. Well Matt Long did me proud again giving me 114, a great peg for margins with 87lb off it the day before. Relentless good pegs for me.
I set up a rig for fishing top set plus 3 sections at an angle left and right, same depth, and one rig with a band on with 0.17 to 16 KKM. LH side for meat, RH for pellet. Two margin rigs, one for the right where I found a little shallow ledge before a steep drop off, and one to the left where it was nearly as deep as out in front. This margin was so undercut it was unreal, must go back at least 3 or 4 feet.
With peg 113 not in today my neighbours were Paul Faires on 112 and fellow Lodger Chris Ollis on 115. I started on the meat line left, drawing the band into the meat. It was certainly a slow start for me and everyone else, I did manage three skimmers and a carp here before I lost 2 foulers. Moved over to the right on the pellet and nailed a carp first drop, then lost a fouler and missed a bite. Swapped back to meat for another skimmer and this just seemed lifeless and so I concentrated on the pellet line.
It was painfully slow for many, with Glenn having a few early carp and Gordon on 111 the same. I had odd carp coming over the pellet as I would get a few bubbles, but I just had liners and no bites. I thought try a piece of meat over this line and I nailed two carp straight away, sorted! Err no, back to uncatchable fish (I guess the likes of Andy Power would have sorted it) but I wasn't alone here as many were just getting foulers. Halfway through I tried my RH margin, nothing at all here so onto the LH margin where I had fed pellets, and on an 8mm pellet I had 3 in 3 drops before all went quiet. Glenn rang me from 132, he said I had to be winning as he couldn't see much being caught, and Woody up on 119 confirmed this. I had to wait for bites in the margin, and as I waited longer I hit less bites and it was going tits up, so I rested it. The RH margin still no good I went back out on top set plus 3 on the pellet and caught one but lost more foulers and just couldn't carry on doing that.
On 115 Chris started to catch carp in his left margin, and some right big lumps they were, he was fishing worm over dead maggot, using a novel rig incorporating a poly bead. As I struggled to nail fish in the margin Chris began to catch me up.
Glenn began to catch well in the last hour, and I could feel the match slipping away from me as I struggled to get a bite not a liner. The RH margin three times had a fish come in and spook out as I was fishing it, the LH the fish were hard to catch, think I fed it wrong, I tried shallow but that didn't work either. I still caught carp, but I wasn't lining them up like I should have been. When the match ended I thought I had close to 100lb but knew in my heart I should have done a lot more.
Top today was Gordon Cannings, winning on peg 111, proving there were carp there to catch on the pole, he had a slow start but caught better later in the match on meat, then like me a couple late on in the margin, 120lb 1oz, well done Gordon who had been struggling on the draw bag before this.
Second was Glenn with 104lb 5oz, and third was myself with 102lb 8oz, and as they paid third I got another pick up, yay! As for my neighbours Paul Faires took out the silvers win with a great 45lb and Chris Ollis had 80lb.
Many anglers told stories of woe after of having trouble with foulers, and that made me feel a bit better about my losses today. 4 days 4 times in the frame, on cloud nine really. With the following day and last match being at Avalon I knew I would have to have paste in my armoury and Glenn did me proud making some for me.
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