Friday 9th May - Rood Ashton evening match

Summer is finally here!! With temperatures hitting 24deg and light winds for the last few days, prospects of a good days fishing were looking good.

This was to be my first outing with a new club, as well as my first visit to Rood Ashton lake just outside Trowbridge. A venue that I had heard loads about but never got round to visiting.

With the draw set to be done a 5pm with fishing from 5.45 to 8.45 I had to get away from work early and be on the road in time to get to Wests Tackle in Trowbridge to sort my licence and meet up with Mark. I left home at about 3.20thinking that would give me more than enough time, but it was one of those afternoons where every moron was out trundling along at 40mph on a main road, also with the A36 being closed at Bath much of the through traffic was now being re-directed through Westbury and Trowbridge, I only just managed to get there in time.

After meeting with Mark we shot off to get to the venue, arriving with enough time to get our kit out and pay our pools. While waiting for the draw Mark and I went for a walk to look at the pegging, Mark pointed out the pegs that he would and wouldn't like to draw.

At the draw Mark was quite happy with his draw (Peg 9) this put him in the area where a match the evening before had been won from but I had drawn my usual duff peg (peg 1) No-one it appears wanted to draw my peg and I got various comments about not being in with a chance.

The peg itself was the nearest to the carpark, which is great when you have limited time to set up. As I was tackling up I could see plenty of fish moving around so felt quite confident of putting a few fish in the net.

There was one main feature of the peg that appealed to me, and that was the end of a large reed bed that stretched from in front of me right across to the other side of the lake, I decided on a main line at 14m against the reeds, the rig consisted of .20 main line to a 14 barbless carp feeder hook and a korum blob float attached to some tightened 14s elastic to give me half a chance of getting the fish out. I also fed 2 margin lines as a backup to rest my main lines both were long at about 13/14m one either side, these had a little more space to control the fish and were rigged up with a 4x10 dura float size 14 hook again to a purple hydro.



On the whistle I deposited a pot of Carp Vader 4mm pellets on each margin line before putting some paste on the hook and shipping it out to the reed bed. Almost straight away I had indications on the float but it took a few minutes to hook my first fish which bolted straight into the reed bed before I could react, by keeping the pole above the fishes head I eventually extracted a fish of about 2lb. With that first fish it became apparent some extreme measures were required for me to stop the fish getting into the reeds.

The next cast saw me hitting the bite by quickly dragging the pole to my left, this worked a treat and I soon had the carp going in the keep net rather than the reeds. After about an hour the fish backed off a little and the bites became hard to hit, so I decided to rest the line and try my left hand margin. This produced a couple of very quick fish then it went quiet so I re-fed and went back out against the reeds, this produced a couple of very quick fish before I snagged up on some line that looked thick enough to tow a truck. I pulled for a break, and unfortunately my elastic broke, this really put me off my stride, I set up another rig quickly enough on another top kit but I didn't have any more kits with a strong enough solid elastic and even though I was using tightened red drennan bungee it still had a little more stretch which meant that the fish were making it into reeds and my hooked to landed ratio went down but I kept enough fish going in the net till the last to keep me in contention.

Drawing peg 1 also meant that I had the honour of scales duty as well, seeing as there was another set of scales round the other side of the lake it seemed obvious that I should start with myself and work round, I got the angler on peg 2 weigh me in and was reasonably pleased to put 59lb 9oz which was the best weight out of those I weighed in and as it turned out enough for me to win the match, second place weighed in 53lb and Mark was 3rd with 50lb, as it turned out the lake had fished poorly and that had let me make the most out of a difficult peg.