I really look forward to this holiday and cannot wait for it to come round. Takes a bit of thinking about and preparation for 6 matches, and certainly fills the van up! Bit of a challenge getting to the fishery on time, but just made it, paid my pools and quickly greeted the rest of the lads. Martyn Woodington, Glenn Bailey, Gary Bowden, Lee Masey, Martin Rayet, Gordon Cannings and Chris Ollis were all on the holiday.
First match was the Saturday open on Campbell and it was a 21 peg sell out, I was looking forward to fishing for skimmers if I drew a decent peg. I pulled out peg 121, it’s on the top bank on its own with corner pegs 119 and 123 either side. I’ve drawn it before and done ok on carp but never won off it or bagged a lot of silvers, but Nick Ewers told me 40lb of skimmers had come off the peg in the week.
You get a good view of the lake from this peg.
I had messaged Stu White in the week to get an insight into how to approach catching the skimmers, and I was armed with worms, casters, maggots and groundbait. I set up 4x14 and 4x16 rigs with 0.12 to 16 SFLB. A 4x12 with same for fishing in the margins. I also set up a shallow rig for carp, and a mugging rig too.
Matches here are fished 10:30 to 4:30, and at the start I fed for silvers at 5m and 10m, and decided to start fishing at 5m. I put double red maggot on the hook and hoped for a quick bite, and it didn’t take long for the float to go under but a carp was hooked. I was about to net it and the hook came out. Went back out but it was quiet so tried the other lines, but all I could get was the odd roach.
After 40 minutes and just 1 skimmer I changed to look for carp fishing shallow. There were carp here coming to the 6mm pellets but in 45 minutes I never had a bite! Back on silvers then, but just one skimmer and out of the blue a tench in the margin, but I was going nowhere. Three hours in and I had a carp, at this stage peg 119 had 2 carp, pegs 123 and 124 had 1 carp each. I noticed a few carp started swirling down to my right by a tree, so a change of plan required, I got out a hard pellet rig and started feeding 6mms there. I also found out that Glenn Bailey and Gary Bowden were getting a few carp on paste, so I got a paste rig out and turned some of my gbait into a paste.
Fishing first down to the tree and there was instant signs on the float and I picked a good few carp here, at the same time Martyn Woodington on 123 caught in his margin. We both caught for about an hour here then we both stopped catching. I reckon I had about 40lb with 1 hour and 45 minutes left, but then the carp rocked up on the paste line and I caught them steady till the end of the match and knew I had over 100lb.
The Match was won by Lee Masey on peg 116 with 150lb 6oz, he caught mostly carp in his left hand margin. I was second with 126lb. Silvers was won by Nick Hargreaves with a great 63lb of skimmers.
A great start for me and some beer money, which was soon spent in the globe that evening lol.
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