Oast Farm, Buxted - 28/02/2009

After last weeks struggle at Shannons I was hoping for a better day today as I drove to Oast Farm fishery at Buxted. The weather was fairly good, mild and dry with little wind and it was forecast to warm up as the day went on. Arriving at the lake the usual suspects were there apart from Al who failed to turn up, I'm guessing he had been offered a days work.

There are a few decent pegs on the lake and I fancied either 8 in the corner of the dam or 9, 10 or 11 on the right hand bank, In to the draw bag and peg 9 is nestling in my palm, Spot on. For company on Peg 8, the flyer peg, was Colin.

On my left was Ryan on peg 10.

The peg has a good depth in the margins and doesn't vary too much out to 9 metres so I set up 3 top kits, 1 for the margins, 1 set at dead depth at 8metres for soft hooker or corn and the 3rd for banded pellet on the same 8 metre line. Cupping in half a pot of 4mm skrettings pellet on both the margin and 8m lines I baited with corn and tried down the inside. Things started slowly with just the odd knock coming to nothing so after 1/2 hour I switched to the 8m rig baited with a GOTBaits Catmeat hooker pellet. First put in and I missed the bite as the float buried. Encouraged I shipped out again however this time the float remained stationary. 5 minutes later it still hadn't moved so I shipped back, baited with corn and tried again. Again the float didn'tmove so after about an hour I decided to try the margin line which I'd been feeding since the 'All in'. Bill had told me to fish tight to the bank but the depth was only about a foot so I dropped in about a metre off the bank where there was almost 2 1/2 feet. After not very long the float disappeared and Carp no.1 was soon in the net, only about 1lb but welcome. Next put in and the same happened, Carp no.2 and words of encouragement echoed across the lake from Peter Mortons direction. A few minutes later and Carp no.3 was on and this time Peter was at hand to take some photo's.

He was clearly worried about losing a £1 to me as the catch shot is a bit blurred.

I was beginning to think this might be my day, how wrong could I be, for the remainder of the match all I managed to catch was two small roach.

The top 3 weights were ;

1. Dave 'le frog' Collier 52lb 4oz

2. Bill Gibbins 27lb 0oz

3. Peter Morton 25lb 6oz

Never mind, I'd still enjoyed my day, Dave had a great day with 27 Carp mainly caught shallow whille Bill having struggled for most of the match snared 7 Carp in the last hour agin fishing shallow.

Next up is a 'Silver Fish' only match with the Maggotdrowners at Wylands Farm Fishery on House Lake which I'm really looking forward to.

Thanks to the guys for sorting out the day, oh and I nearly forgot I lost yet another £1 to Peter the first and hopefully the last in 2009.