another bank holiday match. landsend

only 14 booked in for todays match but mike still let us spread out a bit as there didnt seem to be as many pleasure anglers about today so we pegged the match lake and half of the speci. jason radford drew 31 which was the peg anton page smashed the match record on recently with 342lb so i didnt think the record was under any threat today. or any other day come to think of it , i think it will be a record that will never be broken, but as the saying goes never say never.
i made the mistake of letting andy france draw for me again , even though after thhe last time he did i said i wouldnt let him do it again, so i was off to peg 7 then, its a peg that i have done ok off in the past as there is a shallow ledge under a small bush on the far bank and providing you keep feeding it the last half of the match can be very productive, so i set up a 4x8 rig on .18 with a 16 b960 for that , a 4x12 on .16 with an 18 b960 to fish hard 6,s over 4,s at 5mtrs and a meat rig on .20 for under the empty each side.
at the start i cupped in a few 4.s at 5mtrs some meat under the the pegs each side and began firing 6,s to the far bank bush, beginning at 5 mtrs it soon became apparent that the wind was going to play a big part in the days proceedings as it was strong now, blowing left to right and forecast to get stronger(mint), so the far bank was going to be a struggle, i had abite straight away well i think it was aloiner to be honest as a skimmer went cartwheeling away from the swim. 15 mins in and a proper bite resulted in a 3lb carp but that was the only fish i had on that line, by now there were some tails on the far bank but i have learnt from past experience that it pays to leave them to get confident before you try and catch them, especially on this venue cos the fish tend to be a bit cute as they have been in here a few years now and have seen it all, so the more confident you can get them in the shallows the better it is . as the 5 mtr line seemed to be a bit of a non starter i cupped some 4,s at an angle to my right at 14mtrs(with the wind). a quick early look on the meat lines produced nothing so i went across but the early activity had stopped , i did manage 1 carp but the wind was making all but impossible to get the rig tight to the bush, in fact i spent more time in the bush rather than under or near it, when i,ve done well off this peg in the past i have ussually had an angler on peg 6 which is on the gap in the islands and i think that helps peg 7 as with someone feeding the gap means that you can draw some fish off them as you can see fish working there way towards you , but not today. i was confident of catching but late as the fish need to find the bait, and thats basically what happened as the fish turned up in the last hour , but the wind had so strong it was all but impossible to get presentation and 2 part grown duckling turned up to really annoy me , the thing with ducks is that they annoy the angler more the fish as i could still see tail patterns in between the 2 tiny terrors, then it happened , the rig got blown up the bush(again)and with the pellet on view one of my little feathered mates nailed it luckily pulling my rig out of the bush, it didnt take more than a few seconds to net the duckling as an 8oz feather duster is no competition for .18 and 16 elastic and when you put the ducky back (honest i did) they tend to bugger off. before that i did manage 2 small carp and some reasonable skimmers on the 14 mtr line and a chub,a skimmer and a tench on the meat lines and a lost carp which did some knitting with my rig under the pallet, i ended up with 10 small carp and some silvers which was going to be no good today.
1st on the day was rod(i cant stand the speci lake)wootten on peg 25 with 120.6 caught on pellet fished long up his left hand margin
2nd tim clarke who had a bite every put in(his words not mine) on paste but done well to avoid them and only put 61.6 on the scales off peg 1
3rd was simon hebditch,s whipping boy nigel bartlett on peg 11 with 60.12 which also included the top silvers weight on the day with 32lb
4th mike (if i sit with a piece of meat on down the edge long enough i will get a bite)west with 55.12 peg 5
5th tony(i must phone the new breed matt tomes to see where i am going wrong)rixon
with 51.10 peg 7
6th andy(the leg end)bryant on 19 with 48lb
fabio won the silvers by default with 27.4 off peg 15 , fairplay to fabsy he has done ok with silvers of late so perhaps he has found his niche as the smaller weights of silvers are much easier to attain for him rather than the big weights needed to win overall (well that should be enough to wind him up LOL)