I was awake before my alarm Sunday and that meant I got to Wetherspoons in good time for my breakfast. Arrived at the fishery in good time and plenty of anglers there as there were 21 fishing meaning tight pegging. I was near the front of the queue to draw and was soon looking at peg 24 disc. I thought that might be OK, but I was soon told by Kev Winstone that the peg had been one of the worst in recent times with 4 carp the most off it recently. Oh dear, but with wind blowing towards me I thought it might be okay.
Got to the peg and oh dear.. carp were spawning like mad around the lake, though not really in my peg. But on 25 the reeds were full of carp spawning and Shaun Townsend was on that one, on my right on 23 was good mate Geoff Francis.
My peg had the end of an island and carp were spawning under the bush, I set up a straight lead for here.
The RH margin looked ok and depth was not as deep as expected, but the foliage was well overgrown and I couldn’t get near it to trim. I set up a rig to fish maggots or worms or corn here with a 12 XSH to 0.17. Also set up a slapping rig with a 4x13 carp shallow, and a 4x10 chianti for catching silvers on the drop if I needed to go for them.
We started at 10:30 and I started slapping a pellet at 14m, no luck here. Slapping a pellet by the reeds also didn’t work so onto the lead where I had been feeding 8mm pellets. Gave this about 40 minutes and lost 3 foulers due to spawning I guess. Shaun had lost 5 carp at this stage and I’d only seen a couple of carp landed, so I tried for some silvers. It was very slow in front, but then going left over some caster I had a 4oz skimmer and a 2 1/2lb skimmer. Sadly that was the end of that line and all I could catch was the very odd tiny roach or Rudd. I sacked this off eventually as I couldn’t see me getting 5lb and Gerry Welsh had that already.
Shaun had now got 6 carp and was getting more by slapping, other than peg 3 I couldn’t see many carp being caught, even venue expert Leighton Palmer was walking. I tried the lead, nothing, went in the margin with a bunch of maggots and was about to give up when the float went under! I half expected it to be fouled but it wasn’t, and a 7lb carp was netted. Couldn’t repeat the trick though.
The spawning activity had relented with 2 hours to go, and this coincided with me catching 3 carp on the lead in about 30 minutes. Of course this died lol. Back in the margin, nowt, back on the lead and hooked another but must have been fouled as pulled like mad for 20 seconds on the clip and then pulled out. Margin produced 3 liners and a Rudd, so pretty pants as was predicted.
It was obvious Shaun had won, and despite him losing loads his catch of 99lb 11oz was nearly double the second place, that went to Matt Challenger on peg 17 with 50lb 11oz. Silvers was won by Gerry Welsh with 14lb 4oz on peg 19 and Nick Saunders on 20 came second with 9lb 5oz. Well done lads.
I ended up 6th with just 24lb which shows how tough it was today. Still the sun shone, the birds sang and we had a laugh, that’s still a good day out in my book.
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