A weekend's fishing

Unusual for me but I fished Saturday and Sunday this week. Started the weekend at Todber manor for the Xmas match, went down with Chris fox , but not before a breakfast in cafe fox, really nice 4.99, thanks Caroline, plenty of time to get to the fishery, 86 people in attendance, and I managed.to get near the front of the queue, into the bucket and out comes 58 on hillview, it was.The area to draw last week, and with the wind being off our backs along this bank I fancied it, so I set up a wag for pellet on the deck, a straight lead for bread and a pole rig for maggot at 14mtrs. Just before the start we had a terrible squall pass through, kit blowing all over, there was even a tackle box blown into the lake, I had one of my roller bags blow in and sink, then my Eva net bag blew in, luckily it went upside down with air  pocket in it, I went across to John Gray on 48 who kindly retrieved it for me.

At the start I fed the long pole line with some micros and maggot, but started on the lead with bread, 3 chucks without so much as a twitch, so that was up the bank never to be slung out again, out on the pole and a few skimmers seemed to be obliging before I had a carp, our bank didn't seem to be as good this week, the only angler getting any sport seemed to be Nick chedzoy on peg 60, fishing the feeder towards the end of the island , and some , lol.
Apart from a quick couple of flirts on the wag which didn't produce anything I spent the rest of the match on the pole just getting odd bites, by the end I thought I had about 50lb, I wasn't to far out as I had 53, ok on our bank apart from Nick on 60 who had 89lb, the pegs on the spit 44 round to 53 seemed. To have fished the best, young George Jones (15)to my right had a nice fish of over 18lb, nice to see young match angler on the bank and he is certainly keen so I hope it goes well for him, well done to his grandad who is his official caddy and taxi, and to Ben hagg who I know gives him lots of encouragement and advice.

The lakes fished well considering the time of year, and ever peg was in, top weight on the day was taken by the very seasonal elf on the shelf , Gary o,Shea on peg 27 whitepost with over 160lb, well done, I didn't get.The with sheets in afraid, but there were several weights over 100lb, very good, and a big thank you and well done to Mr and Mrs candy on a well run affair, with help from his more than able staff.
Into Sunday and it was the last of the viaduct silvers league, and I was second going into today's match so nothing short or a section win would do if I had any chance of winning it, but breakfast first and myself and Chris ended up in the cross keys at lydford for food and all very nice and tasty, 4.65.
Into the fishery and again I found myself near the front of the queue, 4th in and I delved into the run hoping to avoid one of the swims that give very little or no chance of winning the section, pull out a ticket and SHIT, peg 64 on lodge, the monk peg up in the corner, a flyer carp peg. It produced a few.skimmers early on in the league before all the colour dropped out of the water. I remember Mark Harper having 40lb of skimmers on this peg, but it was probably 20 years ago, also there are rumoured to be a few perch living down by the monk, but I can't recall any being caught there for at least 20 years again, (legendary mythical beasts), I was definitely in for a bit of a scratcher, so I set up two 16 mtr lines, one to the left , another for the trees opposite, one for 14 mtrs just to the left of the trees, and a short caster rig topset and two. After putting casters across to the trees, and groundbait and caster on the other two long lines , then began on the short caster line, I caught straight away on caster , nothing big but 1 to 4oz roach, it was going ok, until I hooked a branch and that finished that line off, apart from some tiny plippy roach on maggot I couldn't catch any better ones. I had to keep rotating around the three long lines, catching mostly in single caster, I had one 4oz skimmer, a 12oz hybrid and a 10oz perch, other than that it was small roach, the wind was really bad making long pole fishing extremely difficult, but I persevered, at the end I new I hadn't won the section as Russ peck on 69 managed.to share a few which would be enough to win the section, also Gabe skarba on 70 had also had a lot of tiny skimmers, but it was closer than I thought as I had 7.13, Russ had just over 9lb and gabe had 8lb exactly, so a lot closer than I thought it was, I should have tried to catch a few more roach instead of trying to force some quality from a peg that didn't have any, it's that crappy word hindsight again. Alvin Jones was top weight today with 21lb, weigh sheets below, and the league was won by rich aherne, even though he was 4th in his section he ended up with 6 points, and I managed.to hang into 2nd with 7 points, the league overalls are also below.

I forgot to smile 😃

And in this one I never 😁😁😁