Sedges Costcutter

 You may be surprised to see a weekday blog, as it’s not often I take a day off work for a match. However, last week I resigned from my company after 38 years loyal service, and have taken a job with a small family run business which is a small competitor. As a result of this I have been put on garden leave for 3 months and so a bit of fishing will be needed as well as jobs round the house and garden. Onwards and upwards. First job was making some rigs, tying hooks and putting some new elastic in my top sets.

I picked up Glenn Bailey just before 7am and we set off for Sedges near Bridgewater, arriving in good time for a breakfast and chinwag. The match was a costcutter on Tile lake, we were fishing as Glenn wanted to practice ahead of his float only match here on Sunday. Peg 40 had won the last match and the wind was blowing down to that end of the lake. Drawing peg 30 I was in a corner as far away from 40 as possible, Glenn had 37.

I had a long left hand margin (end bank) and put up a pole rig for fishing at 13m and pellet, and a hybrid feeder for casting further along. A 4x16 rig for 13 straight out in front with 0.15 to 18KKMB for banded pellet and a 4x16 with 0.17 to 14 XSH for margin to my right.

Starting at 10:15 I fed some pellets at 13m but started on the feeder. Second cast and rod was off the rest and a heavy fish was on. Nice first fish about 8lb, a few casts later another carp of 9lb and a skimmer ended the first hour. I got snapped up, and so upped the hook length to 0.19. Casting was tricky, a cross wind that kept changing was making it hard to get the feeder as close to the bank as I wanted. In the second hour another carp, then a run of skimmers before a 10lb common. 

The third hour it went very quiet but I did get one carp of 12lb on the feeder. On my right a lad called Dean Bradford was struggling with just 1 skimmer, it seemed a lot of people were struggling but Glenn and the guys around him were getting some carp. Dean put a pellet waggler out and managed 3 carp, I’d really wanted to set one up at the start, but I had a problem with reel and ran out of time, think this was to cost me. By now trying the long pole had got me 1 skimmer and it appeared devoid of fish in my peg except for the very end of the bank by a tree on the rope. I took the line clip off and cast nearer to the tree. This brought me another big carp, a straightened hook, and then I chucked it in a bush and lost the lot.

I came in on the margins, nothing left, but top set to my right and it flew under, 12lb common eventually landed. Couldn’t get another touch. Out at 13m and finally got a little fizz, after a few liners I had a nice 4lb ghostie. All went dead, but with a few minutes left I landed another decent common from the margin on corn.

I was pretty sure I was off the pace, but sat in the sun in a T-shirt for most of the day made it a very pleasant day. Jamie the fishery owner was soon arriving with scales, from peg 21 on my bank the best weight was 59lb by Dean on the next peg. My skimmers went 13lb+ and my carp 83lb, so 94lb. The opposite bank at the other end was the place to be it seemed..

1st Glenn Bailey 118lb mainly paste peg 37

 2nd Colin Butler 106lb peg 40

3rd Dave Chedda 103lb peg 36

I was 4th

Silvers 1st Robert 24lb peg 22,   2nd Mike 21lb peg 26.

I think the peg I had was a potential winner, needed to chuck the feeder longer earlier and tried the pellet wag. Need to practice more lol!