Windmill Fishery Open

 Back at Windmill again for the Sunday open. There’s currently two finals later this year, one for qualifiers from Thursday matches, and one for Sunday’s. I missed out on qualifying on Thursday by 2lb, but felt I could have a good chance with a decent peg today. It was a pleasant start to the day weather wise although showers were forecast for later. The draw was done before 9am and I was gutted when the bottle top I pulled out had number 20 on it. 20 and 21 have been awful for a long time and I knew I would not stand a chance to qualify today, reluctantly I decided to just go for the silvers. 

Peg 20 is probably 17m wide, and with pegs 19 and 21 not pegged I had lots of room. I set up 3 rigs, a 4x10 for fishing shallow/ on the drop. A 4x12 for margin and across as depth was the same. Lastly a 4x16 for the deep water. An 18 SFL to 0.10 accu power was used on all rigs for starters. I mixed up some gbait Thatchers and F1, soaked some micros, and had some dead red maggots and some live maggots supplied to me by Martin McMahon who was helping young Charlie Isaacs fish this match. Charlie is son of my team mate and Bitterwell lake manager Paul Isaacs. Charlie has qualified to represent England under 15’s this year, big congratulations to him for this achievement.

Match started at 10:30 and initial feed was 4 spots, top set plus 2 at angles left and right, similarly at 13m. Steady on the feed and gbait on right, micros on left to keep options open. I fed maggots left and right near the margins. The top set plus 2 lines were a complete waste of time, never had a bite on them all day! Out to my long lines, over the micro tried soft pellet, red maggot live and dead, not so much as a rattle, over the gbait and a bite at last! But it was a fouled carp that soon broke me. An hour gone and nothing in the net! On peg 18 Gerry Welsh was fishing for carp and was also blanking.

I tried live maggot in the margins and caught one 3oz perch, maybe more time needed for the roach to show. Tried my other lines again but still not a bite, so plumbed a new spot at 14.5m into shallower water. Fed a mix of gbait, micro and dead reds, and left it for 15 mins. When I went over this new line I had a bite within seconds, unfortunately it was a carp of 3lb which I landed. I then had a 3oz skimmer and then lost a skimmer which was fouled, then lost a fouled carp, and that was the end of that. This was not going to plan. I did manage to get 6 or 7 little roach and perch in the margins, but it just was poor I wouldn’t give it long.

Three hours in and my 13m micro line showed some signs of life at last, I was getting tiny indications on the float that I thought my be liners, and several times the float slid under slowly and my strike resulted in no resistance. My patience was rewarded though, two 3oz skimmers in two drops followed by a near 2lb skimmer. Maybe this was the arrival of a few… hell no lol.

Gerry had now got a tiny perch, and was really hacked off as he could see anglers on the opposite bank catching carp regularly, luckily I couldn’t see them. Brolly went up soon after as the predicted rain arrived, it wasn’t really a hindrance to me as I was mostly sat like a gnome. I tried another new line at 16m to my left a bit, just another carp lost here. With an hour left I’d fed a small amount of meat at 6m looking for a bonus skimmer whilst knowing a carp could get in on the act. I did get 1 bite on the meat, a large carp hooked in the mouth that was soon leaving me to put another hook length on. The 13m micro line gave me another bite with about 40 mins left, and it was a 1.5lb+ skimmer. That was it for me, but Gerry soon after caught his first and only carp.

What a struggle that was, I reckoned on having 5lb of silvers which really wasn’t going to be enough based on recent silver weights here. However, I’d given it my all for 6 hours and was going to weigh in, Gerry was soon packed up though, and he said we’d been on the worst 2 pegs today and he wondered why the fish don’t seem to want to be in this area. The scales soon arrived from peg 12, and I was surprised to see 1lb 12oz was the best silvers so far, my fish went 5lb 4oz and top on my side of the lake.

As you can see one of the skimmers had some red marks on it, I’m sure this is damage as a result of spawning.

When the scales came back from the other side of the lake (where the fish evidently were) I was told there were two higher silver’s weights. However, the anglers who had those would frame and so I ended up winning the silvers, which was a bonus on a tough day. Steve Salter got 2nd in silvers with a 2lb perch and skimmer for a 3lb 14oz total.

Winner overall today was Paul Barnfield who had 163lb from peg 10 on worm and micros.

2nd Nic Sanders 124lb peg 2

3rd L Reynolds 112lb peg 6

My next match is Thursday at Bitterwell lake, and my debut in the over 55’s club, really looking forward to it.