Will this summer ever get started? Well yesterday (saturday) wasn't bad but I was busy doing some gardening, which left me with today. The forecast was breezy and wet and the only reason I was looking forward to it was because it was on the Park Lake at Todber Manor. I venue I enjoy fishing and usually do quite well on.
Well the day started with me cooking breakfast for Mark and myself, its always better to go fishing on a full stomach, while I cooked Mark loaded my kit ready to get down to the lake. With breakie eaten we make the 5 min trip from my house down to todber and arrived to find quite a few already there keen to get going. Very quickly we were mugged for our pools money before taking a walk with Tim Suttle who was running the match to work out the pegging, although when the draw was made, there was obviously a mistake because several people including myself ended up on pegs that weren't going to be put in.
I found myself for a change on a reasonable draw, Peg 30. As everyone started to get settled I discovered that I had 2 spare pegs to my left and the pleasure of Ian Hornby (Herbie for those who know him from TF fame.) on my right.
Looking at my peg I was pleased to see a couple of nice holes in the far bank grasses which on this venue is usually a bonus. My plan of attack was initially based on 3 lines, 1 against the far bank, 1 at 11m down the middle and a 3rd line in my left hand margin. And for me on this venue the chief bait is paste for all three lines. I had 2 pastes with me that I make at home, the first is my trusty basic paste made with ground pellets and the second was a paste I had made with some carp vader predator+ pellets ground up with water added. This produced a really nice vivid red paste with an interesting odour.... And as it turned out very effective texture.
On to the match then, on the all it I potted my usual mixture of hemp and pellets onto the margin and track lines, then popped some paste on the hook and shipped out to far bank. Fairly quickly I had a couple of fish but it was obvious that the fish were mooching around off the deck rather than getting their heads down due to lots of missed bites. I spent the next hour switching between rigs trying to put a few fish together but struggled with lots of missed bites and foul hooked fish and with a tricky wind I also kept hooking up in the far bank grass.
By now I had hoped that my track paste line would be solid with fish, first drop in and I was getting indications many of which I was missing, eventually I managed to hit one of these iffy bites which turned out to be a small F1 not the proper carp that I usually manage on the 11m line. It soon became apparent that the lake wasn't fishing as well as normal and some changes needed to be made.
I felt that I had overfed the paste line, so the only thing I could do was to decide on a different line and start again. This turned out to be an inspired move as after feeding a small amount of pellets and letting it settle for 30min I went over it and started to pick up the odd fish, by letting the paste feed the swim it started to get stronger and stronger and this time I was catching proper carp averaging 3lb. By resting the swim occasionally and going down the edge I managed to get into a steady rhythm, that was until I trashed my main paste rig after snagging up. Even though I put an identical rig on it just didn't sit right and I couldn't get back fully into my catching rhythm for the last hour.
On the final whistle I felt I'd done a reasonable weight but not enough to win anything, those drawn further down the section to my right had appeared to be sacking all day and looked set to weigh in some big weights. First to weigh in was eventual match winner Kev Abigail on end peg 37 one of the ones that appeared to be sacking from beginning to end. Kev put 112lb on the scales, then the weights dropped to 70lb followed by 66lb until they got to me, I was quite surprised to put 90lb 08oz on the scales which was second until Guy Manton on peg 25 put 92lb exactly to push me back to 3rd.
Ultimately an interesting match in which I had to really work to get the best out of the peg.
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