Lakeside, Ranskil. 01-10-2006

Provided the weather doesn’t turn too much over the next couple of weeks this match would give me a bit of insight for our final club match on October 15th. I wasn’t too keen on pulling peg 22 out at the draw. I’d brought 4 pints of casters to fish the trawler so I’d have preferred a low teens peg where the chub tend to reside. Rumour had it that peg 22 won the previous week with 122lb so we’d see.

I originally thought 22 was the island peg but it’s next door, although you do get a chuck down the side of the island. I’d set up two rigs of the 17′ rods both with the same rig 0.12 Trabucco Diamond race with a size 18 Middy 7313 tied 0.12 Preston Precision. One had a 3gm drennan upside down waggler to chuck down the side of the island, and one a stick float for closer in. I also set up 3 pole rigs.

All the pole rigs were made close in as the a lot of fish can be caught down the edge here especially the lumps as well some good skimmers. The paste line was pretty much at the end of my keepnet to my left to allow me to keep feeding it by hand as was the caster line but which was to my right.

At the all in I fed the close in lines and fired a pouch full of casters down the side of the island and threw in a handful of casters for the stick line. I pulled out one skimmer from the waggler before it became aparent that the stick line was solid. Each time I fed the ide were swirling for the bait as soon as it hit the water. I switched over to the stick and started catching ide up to 12 ounce straight away. I carried on for much for the rest of the match
catching ide, the odd roach and a couple of skimmers about a pound and a half each.

I had a bit of a ‘mare half was through as my closed face reel decided it wasn’t going to release the pin so I couldn’t get any line from it. A quick swap of rods saw me back on track.

As the rain came down and wind picked up a little, the fish backed off a bit so for the last hour I fished down the edge to see if I could glean any info on how the carp were feeding. Nothing came of corn or meat but I had two lumps on paste and lost 4 fish, a couple of these were foul hooked. By the end of the match it was solid down the edge, you could see swirls from the tails as they’d got their heads down over the paste line.

By the time they reached my with the scales 60lb was in front. I didn’t think I’d got as much as that but when the scales tipped at 63lb 10z I’d done better than I thought. Not knowing what had been caught in the earlier pegs I was in for a nervous 10 minutes until everyone had been weighed. By the time I’d driven round, everyone had weighed in and I’d won.

Overall a good insight into the upcoming match, weather permitting and a good win to boot.

Results:
1st Matt Williams (63lb 1oz, peg 22)
2nd Mick Wilson (60lb)
3rd Chris Lee (49lb, peg 21)