Landsend league rnd 1

Firstly Saturday, Judith myself and my youngest son James went up to Saul junction on the Gloucester canal to try and catch some perch on plastics, well another epic fail really, James had two small one while Judith and me both blanked, we dropped back onto Bristol docks on the way home, where we all blanked, oh well. But Judith was doing her best penguin impression with her hand me down clothes,

Onto Sunday and it was the first round of the Landsend fishery winter league , run by cosmic Ken rayner, a thankless job but he does well, he managed to get 27 to fish so we were spread over the three lakes, 9 on each, to much room really, another couple on each lake would have been nice, but its a busy match calendar, so always was going to be difficult to fill it.
Di,s normal tasty breakfast was consumed and it was straight into the draw bucket, out comes peg 28, far bank of the speci lake, my closest neighbours were Alan oram on 25 and Dale housen on 31, so as I said earlier a little to much room really, and opposite was the now less ample form of Steve.Sewell on 36, Russ peck trundled past me on his way to corner peg 32, which I did fancy.
Back to my swim and it can be ok, its a full 16 mtrs to the far bank, so a hard day could be on the cards,

Rigs today were one for on top of the island shelf in about 2 feet of water, but I didn't hold out much hope for this as it was very clear, another for hard pellet in a couple of spots down the island shelf, a meat rig to fish in front of the empty pallets each side, and a silver's rig for caster at 5 mtrs.
At the start up fed all lines with the relevant baits, except tight to the island, just to see if I could tempt and early mug fish, dobbing white maggot around, as bread is not allowed, after a fruitless 30 minutes of doing this along the far bank, that was binned never to be used again, came down the island shelf on the banded pellet rig, that was nearly as bad but I did manage a couple of small roach on the pellet, never a good sign, so 90 minutes in and very little to show for my efforts, I picked up the silver's rig, and never really put it down except for a few more tries on the pellet rig across, but again only roach bites to show for waving 16 mtrs about, also a look down towards each side empty pallets, but nothing to show for that either, I had a nice few hours fishing , catching roach from a couple of ounces to about 8oz on single caster on the deck at 5 mtrs, most enjoyable. I could also catch the same way across at the bottom of the island shelf, but it was taking to long, so I stuck with the short line, especially as no one seemed to be catching much in the way of silver's, a few better skimmers were coming out, but not enough to trouble what I was doing, probably to clear, Russ peck on peg 32 seemed to be doing the best with several carp and Steve Sewell had three and lost a few, also Mike duckett on 34 had three by the end but his were smaller than Steve's, of what I could hear the other lakes were fishing worse than our lake, on the all out I had a look in my net and thought I had at least 15lb, so it was a surprise when the scales went round to 21 lb , apart from two small hybrids a couple Rudd , it was all roach, made for a pleasant day, and a better than expected start to the league, winning the silver's and coming 4 th on the lake, by no means a disaster when I saw the weigh sheets for the other lakes, Russ peck won the lake and was top on the day with 69lb.

As I said the other lakes fished even harder as the weigh sheets below will show, but it seems as though the fish over the most of the country have switched off.