I arrived at the venue about 6:30 to be met by one car (someone else here) and a notice saying that due to a pre-booked match the pond was closed from 3:30! I was devastated because as you know the hours before dark are when the bigger fish come out to play!
Peg 1 was free again so that part of my plan was successful. Here is my swim.
According to the forecast the weather was going to produce another sorcher however having driven for 35 minutes in the rain and setting up in the wet I began to doubt it.
Learning from previous experience, I didn't even contemplate fishing the swim directly in front of me but directly went for the one by the lily pads. I fed the swim early as I set up with my usual starting line up (5lb main line, 16 hook). There was a slight difference in that I used Drennan wide gape hooks to nylon this time in the hope that should I indeed hook a good fish my chances of catching it were improved.
I was not happy with having to pack up at 3:30 and this initially affected my concentration. I knew there were plenty of fish around but I just couldn't get into any of them. The first hour yielded only a couple of small roach on single maggot. They were so small I switched immediately to scopex flavoured sweetcorn.
I started to get small carp of a few ounces nearly every cast but nothing more substantial. The pattern for the day was set. One ball of groundbait every hour, a few hempseeds every cast, a few pieces of sweetcorn into the margins to my right every fish caught and an alternation of hookbait between the scopex sweetcorn and bread everytime I caught a fish.
This worked perfectly as I had a bite a cast and almost a fish every other cast. They were mostly small carp but interspersed with these were some fine roach and a good head of crucians (see below).
The odd tench also made it in to the net, including 2 or 3 like this one.
The other angler packed up at 9:30. We bumped into each other as I was returning from a call of nature. I told him I wasn't happy with the situation and he showed me the list of matches booked. Today wasn't on it - so he said according to club rules I couldn't therefore be removed. I didn't particularly want a confrontation so I split the difference and took the chairman's number. I rang him about 10:30 and left a message explaining the situation and asking him to ring me back.
Around lunchtime another member turned up and after an hour or so I went to stretch my legs and had a word with him. Good news he told me the match would only be attended by 5 or so people, including the chairman. I was feeling confident about things now. I even got into one of two decent fish (nothing spectacular though).
Back to the fishing, they were flying in now. One of the guys at work was astounded when I told him that on a previous trip I'd caught close on 100 fish - so this time I counted each one. One piece of sweetcorn for a digit and a piece of meat for the 10's. By 2:30 I had around 60 in the hyperthetical net. I knew things would slow down when I targeted the better quality fish so I took nothing for granted.
I finally spoke to the chairman about 3 o'clock and he said it was fine, I could stay where I was. I took this as a positive sign and immediately switched tactics. I feed cubes of luncheon meat into the 2 swims and then loaded up the hook. First cast away goes the float and in comes yet another very small carp. How do they manage that?
I stayed on the meat until I packed up at 8pm but couldn't connect with anything larger than a few ounces. The sun reflecting off the water had finally taken it's toll. I was knackered. The match finished at the same time and I thanked the chairman, Dave Walker for the favour. All in all I caught 87 fish, 13 shy of my target. Not many of them topped a pound but I did catch a nice cross section. The bottom line was I enjoyed myself.
Here is a picture of my lone spectator. He stayed hanging aound my swim all day!
Tight lines.
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