I got back home on Saturday from a very nice holiday in Jersey (hence no fishing last weekend) but had picked up man flu. I rang to speak to Glenn Bailey and he had done me proud by getting all my bait and gbait (mixed) ready for Tony Rixon's float only match at Trinity. To be honest I felt awful and had thought of cancelling, then I had a bad night being unable to sleep due to blocked sinuses. Come Sunday morning I over dosed on some tablets (accidental) and picked up Glenn. We had a very good breakfast in the Hill Top cafe and I caught up on the previous weeks news with Matty Toomes!
Although Glenn had been a tremendous help I really didn't feel mentally prepared for this match, and when I drew peg 62 and Tony just laughed at me making me think I really should have cancelled! I got to my peg to find Glenn pegged opposite me on the island, so we both had poor pegs (and so did Bela Bakos who foolishly asked Glenn to draw for him lol). I had a chat with the anglers nearby and it seemed many had been in this area in the previous match, Mike Nicholls was on 64 and said it was crap, and the best I could get was to aim for 8 to 10lb of silvers. With that in mind I set up a 4AAA waggler with 2 no 8 and 1 no 10 down the line with an 18 to 0.11 for fishing out about 20 metres+ where I would feed caster. On th pole at 14.5m I would feed gbait, worm and caster and set up a 0.8 gm rig and 0.4gm rig, both with 18 to 0.11. I had a bulk down and 2 no8 droppers on the 0.8 rig, spread shot on the other. I also set up a paste rig for a line against the lily pads (never had a touch here).
So to start I cupped in 6 balls of my gbait and cw&c, and went over it with the 0.8gm rig, it was solid with blips! I tried various hook baits but bits of worms were best to avoid the blips and attract the odd 1oz to 2oz roach! I was soon behind my neighbour Kev Moulten when he landed a 5lb carp (after it had gone through my peg and into next doors!) and after 90 mins I might have had just about a 1lb. I picked up the waggler and hoped it would be ready for action after I had fed it with caster regularly. Um no, 1 roach and 1 eel in about 30 mins. This was going the way my last match went here!
Not much else happened for me in the next 2 hours except for getting wet from an enormous thunderstorm. I held onto my brolly to take shelter, but then as the rain eased I dropped the brolly onto my pole smashing the no 5 section. There was a moment as I got off my box when I thought about packing up, especially as Glenn had said a little earlier "I'm ready to go when you are", but I had seen Mike Nicholls catch a couple of carp on the pole and paste, and so I set up a new rig for 13 mtr at 11 o'clock, fed a big cup of 6mm pellet and dropped the paste in. Twenty minutes later I had a 6lb common, and 10 mins after that a fish around 11lb. This got Craig Edmunds worried who up until then was winning my section, and got me excited. However, the carp drifted away and I tried lots of feeding variations to get them back, then finally with 10 mins to go I had 3 bites but connected with none. Ten minutes after the whistle the peg was a mass of fizzing, oh how I laughed.....
The two carp weighed 17lb and and my bits 3lb, and my 20lb was 2nd in the section to Trig who had 25lb (including 6 carp on paste and some skimmers.) Mike Nicholls ended up top weight on the bank after a good last two hours on the paste (see his blog) and the match was won by Tony (see his blog!).
Would I have caught more if I had fished the paste for longer / fed the pellet earlier? Well I think so and I was to negative today, but we will never know for sure I guess. Sorry if this isn't as in depth as usual, still feeling lousy!
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