Had a message in the week from Neil Mercer that a few of the lads from Bristol were going up to Heron Lake as it was Neil's birthday, Neil booked me into the open and that was my Sunday sorted. I also joined Neil and some other lads for a few ciders and a curry on Friday night, definitely had one too many but it was a laugh a minute all night.
Amongst other things on Saturday I met up with Mike Nicholls, Glenn Bailey and Geoff Francis at the White Heart in Bitton. It was great to finally sit in the sun with a few mates and a beer. After this I got home and got on making up some shallow rigs for the F1's in Heron Lake, as I assumed this would be the way to win.
Sunday morning up bright and early and with the weather forecast looking sunny I settled on a shorts and T shirt day, just made sure I had some sun tan lotion first lol. I got to the venue in good time and was all ready to go, got to draw my own peg today and pulled out peg 7, one next to where I drew on my first visit. It wasn't in my mind one of the better pegs where you have some room, but I was still looking forward to the day. Rig wise I decided to go with a few shallow rigs of varying depths (from the minimum allowed) and also a margin rig. Shallow rigs were Des Shipp Carp floats in 4x10 with 0.12 to 18 KKM-B with a band. On the margin rig I used a 4x12 F1 pellet float with 18 SFL-B to 0.12. I never bothered setting up any deep rigs, but I did set up the method feeder which was never used in the end.
I wasn't sure how to begin the match, but decided on the margins whilst feeding 4mm pellets out to 14m to get the fish shallow. I decided to throw corn to my left, and drop small balls of methodmix gbait and maggots into my right. I had a slow start but got bites in the margin so stuck with it thinking I was priming my shallow line. I think it was after about 30 mins I had to go out shallow as I could see Paul Elms, Dave Willmot and Simon Duke all catching shallow. I shipped out with the mid depth rig and gave this a go, no joy on it at all, so onto the deeper rig. This really wasn't much better, but I did get the odd indication. I tried the shallowest rig and finally I caught, a chub.. hmmm. Going deeper again I caught 2 carp of less than a pound. By now I was miles behind those anglers to my right, to my left wasn't great but I could see some fish being caught shallow. An hour and a half in and I finally caught an F1 shallow, and caught a couple more in the next 10 minutes. Just as I thought I was going to start getting them it was dead again. I switched back into the margins, although I caught a couple to the left on corn it was never great, but the RH margin on the gbait was better. I fished here with double red maggot and fed a ball of gbait in a Preston Cad pot with a few maggots too. I was starting to pick off the odd fish now, mostly carp but was still playing catch up.
About three hours into the match all the guys to my right stopped catching shallow, and they began to really struggle. I carried on catching in the margin and was making a little headway. Simon started to catch in his margins in peg 6, but Dave Wilmott on 4 was struggling in his. I tried putting gbait into the left margin as I felt at times I needed to rest the right margin but was getting no signs elsewhere. Unfortunately the gbait in the left margin didn't work. Mike Etheridge on peg 8 was not catching in his margins, nor shallow, but he had a few deep short and long, and I realised I had probably messed up not setting up a deep rig. I carried on with the RH margin, but I was getting a little bit of trouble not getting proper bites, a change to corn on the hook worked sometimes.
Paul Elms started to catch again and was doing well it seemed, I took a few carp out of the left margin on corn over pellet feed, but again it died quickly. I realised that the fish in right side were coming off the bottom taking the maggots on the drop that I was potting in. I tipped some maggots into the gbait and just fed them like this, it did seem to improve my catch rate, but I had left it just a little to late. Once again I had really enjoyed the day, and trying to work out how to feed, what to feed, what hook baits and hooking the fish was all great fun, I like this sort of fishing. Unfortunately I was pretty sure I was out of the running for a frame place due to my poor start.
The scales soon arrived and from peg 2 Paul was top weight with 107lb, Gordon Cannings had 50lb on 3 and then Dave Willmot 82lb on peg 4. Simon had 80lb and then my turn and I had 84lb. Mike had 60lb next to me, and then the next big weight was Joff Rogers on 11 who had 133lb and won the match.
Top 4 were paid out.
1st Joff Rogers 133lb peg 11
2nd Paul Elms 107lb peg 2
3rd Joe McMahon 102lb 8oz peg 14
4th Martin Rayet 93lb 10oz peg 16.
Some great anglers there, all very hard to beat!
I ended up in 7th place and so 9lb was all I needed to frame, those first 90 minutes did for me sadly, but I really enjoyed my day.
No fishing next weekend, hope you all enjoy the bank holiday weekend sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment