Landsend Fishery Open

Travelled down to Landsend with Glenn Bailey today, and after a good breakfast we arrived very early. Twenty minutes before the draw time Tony Rixon approached me with the draw bag and said get on and draw you might draw lake 3 and have a long walk! After Ade Crawley sold me a £1 (for my 74p) for the £21 pools I drew peg 66 on yep the far lake. Immediately all thoughts of framing were gone and it was a case of go for silvers or the section win. I felt sorry for Glenn who pulled my trolley to my peg, and then went and drew the same lake on peg 42, nice bit of exercise though!

As I set up I wasn't happy with the signs, I could not see any fish topping or feeding but once the sun came out there was the odd cruiser, I didn't expect the lake to fish well but you never know! You are at the end of an island on peg 66 so a chance to draw some fish I thought, and peg 67 was left out so I had a margin to my left. I set up a 4x12 rig with 0.12 to 18 B911 for soft pellet at 10m, another 4x12 but with 0.14 to 16 PR36 for across in 2.5ft of water (and one non hair rig for soft pellet), a 4x10 with 0.16 and 16 PR36 for up in the water and a 4x10 margin rig with 0.16 to PR478 for meat. Plumbing up I found the corner itself was very shallow at 8", but a few feet along the island it dropped to 2.5ft all the way along.

To start the match I fed a small amount of micros at 10m and across in the 2.5ft swim. I fed 4mms by catty to the corner hoping to see if the carp would come out to play! In at 10m and all I had in the first 15 mins were 2 tiny skimmers, so I fed a little more bait here and that got rid of the snotty skimmers and I had no more bites here ALL DAY! I went across and I started to get bites from small F1's on soft pellet, I also caught a couple on banded 6mm pellet when roach took a liking to the soft pellet. The odd carp had shown itself on the corner and I had a look in there after an hour, but the fish would not stay in the peg and all I had was a F1 and pulled out of an ide.

I concentrated back on the 2.ft swim and hooked a 6lb carp here and after this the swim never recovered, with just the very odd F1 showing. Two hours in and bites were very hard to come by, where as Andy France on 68 was catching carp and odd F1 against the corner of the island, although he had more than 3ft depth on his corner. I tried the margin (which I was feeding with caster, corn and meat) but it was lifeless and my whole peg switched off with no fish showing except for cruisers. In the last 3 hours I foul hooked 3 carp and had not landed a single fish, until with 1 minute to go I had my first bite in the margin, after the whistle I landed the culprit a 9lb carp.

That was a very, very tough match and there was nothing I could do for most of the time but rotate swims, and I even went down to 0.10 but it didn't work. My weight was 24lb 7oz with the F1s going 8lb+. Nigel Barlett won the silvers on my lake with 21lb, despite getting vermined out with 42lb of carp. Alan Healy was best weight on the lake with a very good 89lb, 13 carp on paste. Speci and Match lakes fished much better with Dean Malin easily winning with 192lb and Tony Rixon coming 2nd with 162lb, from flyers on speci!

See Tony's blog for more info, I can't write much more about this shite day, other than to say Glenn only had 21lb from peg 42, and as an Arsenal fan his day was complete when Liverpool equalised in the last minute, ouch!