Most of the match lakes were very busy with matches on lakes 1 & 2 and it soon appeared that lakes 3 was busy too with a small 15 peg club match on the far bank of lake 4. After looking around for a while longer we settled on a few pegs on lake 4 well away from the match. As we got back to the cars to collect our gear my phone rang and it was yet another Maggotdrowner, Dave the Fish asking where we were as he'd too come along to fish for a few hours. Soon enough we arrived at our pegs and set about targetting the lakes fish stocks. I had travelled light today and had just taken along my pole so set up just 2 rigs both with 4 x 14 Malman "Thicko" floats, one a margin rig to be fished tight to the reeds to my left and the second at 6 metres set full depth. Plumbing up straight in front I found about 4 feet of water at 6 metres although the bottom seemed to shelve off slightly the further right I went, the margins had around 2 feet.
As I had fished the lake a few days before I knew it wasn't necessary to cup my feed in so just threw 3 good handfuls of 6mm Skrettings carp pellets on my main line and a couple in the margins. First put in resulted in a small but perfectly formed mirror carp around 8ozs which was followed by it's twin soon after. Things continued like this for some time before I connected with one of the lakes resident tench which gave a good account of itself before being safely netted. At just short of 5lbs it was a lovely fish and one of many I hoped.
Shortly after catching the tench Dave and Peter arrived and set up in two my to my right. Dave had travelled all the way down from Yorkshire to drop his wife and daughter in London so they could go to the Prince concert at the O2 arena so looked a little jaded as he set up his gear. Peter had brought along his new Shakespeare Mach 3, 11ft micro pellet waggler rod to give it another work out. He'd used at Rolfs Lake firt time out and it had handled Rolfs big fish very well. It certainly looks and feels a very nice rod.
All around the lads were catching fish, well almost all of us as Dave was doing his usual garden Gnome impression, perhaps if he wasn't such a tight arsed yorkie he might feed enough pellet to actually draw some fish in to his peg. Bill to my left was bagging small carp and to be honest was getting a little bored when he latched in to something better. He too had managed to find a lovely tench and soon after had snared another. Dave the Fish was busy feeding the margins with copious amounts of hemp whilst taking afew few fish from around 5 metres. Being the nice man that he is he popped off to the food wagon and bought us all coffee and burgers, good on ya Dave and we took a break.
Red Leader started catching a few fish after this and was well pleased to also land a nice Tench.
By now the match on lake 2 had finished and Peter decided to move across to it and catch some fish from the margins as the swim was alive with fish. It seemed to be a wise choice as soon enough his rod was bending under the strain of numerous carp to 5lbs and about a dozen barbel to 2lbs. Bill, having only caught one barbel before of arounds 6ozs, popped over to Peter and borrowed his rod to try and beat this. Despite trying hard he just couldn't catch one it was carp after carp for him. After 15 minutes of trying he handed Peter back his rod and as he stood and watched in disbelief as Peter immediately caught another barbel. Poor Bill was gutted especially when a little later I dropped in to the peg next to Peter and caught one of around 2lb 8ozs soon afterwards.
All in all it was an enjoyable few hours on the bank. Bill will have to come back again to break the barbel hoodoo and I'm sure Peter and the others will be there to cheer him on.
My plan of attack was going to be a main line at 5 metres and a margin swim to my right in case the main line failed. Both rigs consisted of a Malman floats 4 x 14 Thicko, 5lb main line to 4lb hooklength and a size 14 Preston PR28. Plumbing up I found 5 feet at 5 metres whilst the margin swim had around 2 feet. I started by cupping in 3 pots of 6mm skrettings pellets on the main line and 2 of the same in the margin swim before baiting the rig with 2 grains of corn. First put in and the float buried after about 5 seconds and I found myself attached to one of the smallest tench I've ever caught. Still it was fish so no blank for me today.
Back in with the corn and this time I was attached to something a little better, a small carp about 6ozs in beautiful condition. The tail was a very bright red colour something you don't see that much.
The next 2 hours continued in similar fashion with loads of tench in the 6-8oz bracket as well as a few carp, then things started to change. I wondered whether any better fish may have been sitting slighlty off the feed so added another section. Shipping back out, this time with 3 small grains of corn, the float dissapeared almost as soon as it had settled and I was suddenly attached to something stretching my Vespe 14 solid elastic to it's extreme. I had heard there were a good number of decent tench in the lake and hoped this was one of them, and so I proved when I slipped the net under a tench of around 3lbs.
Ron, the bailiff had agreed I could use a keepnet if I wanted to for some photo's at the end of the session so I laid it out gently in the margins in the hope that there were more larger tench to come. Back in and again there was decent resistence on the strike, it looked like the bigger fish had finally found my feed. and another tench of the same size was safely deposited in the keepnet. The next 2 hours were fantastic as quality tench came one after the other until I packed up at 2.30pm.
