Partridge lakes

November 23rd , peg 105 Covey five

With my wife having a rare Sunday off work i decided to take full advantage of it and made a trip to Partridge lakes to contest the open match , the weather leading up to today had been pretty awful in fact the previous night we had a proper deluge of rain and this had a bearing on the weights caught during the week , in fact Saturdays open taking place on Covey 5+6 was only won with a mid thirty pound weight and all the top six weights came from Covey six which had a club match on today so wasnt in the open .The team match taking place on Covey 1-4 was won with 90lb but the f1s definitely seemed to be balled up with some people getting good weights while others really struggling .

On arrival at the venue i was in formed that their was ninety anglers in attendance which just goes to show the popularity of the venue , which meant they was going to be Covey 1-5 plus Marsh canal in the draw bag and the only one i didn’t want to be on was Covey five after last weeks struggle on their in fact 23lb won that lake yesterday . My drawing hand let me down yet again as number 105 stuck to my mitt so off i headed back to Covey five although it was one of the better pegs in the section and i last fished this peg on the Maver Match this qualifier where i broke my number four section on my pole and got well an truly battered on both sides so you can say it brought back some bad memories .

I decided to use just three rigs today ;

3ft both slopes , 4×12 malmans benny float with 0.12 garbo main line which had a 0.10 garbo hook length and a size 20 gamma pellet hook , elastic was orange matrix .

4ft both slopes , 4×12 malmans benny float with 0.12 garbo main line which had a 0.10 garbo hook length and a size 20 gamma pellet hook , elastic was orange matrix .

5ft channel 4×14 malmans benny float with 0.12 garbo main line which had a 0.10 garbo hook length and a size 18 gamma pellet hook , elastic was orange matrix .

malman roob

My bait was ;

1 pint red and white maggots

1 pint micro dusted with f1 dark ground-bait

small tub of white and normal expanders

When the all in sounded i went straight across on to my 3ft rig because i didn’t feel that they would be any shallower in these cold conditions , i tapped in a small kinder pot containing a few maggots plus a nugget of micro + ground-bait i had a single red maggot on the hook after a couple of minutes my float dipped and i foul hooked my first f1 which came off on the way in not really the start i was looking for . I began picking up the odd f1 on this line but they were only small and the guy on peg 106 was getting a fish a chuck fishing towards the point of the island at 2ft i was thinking that maybe i had made a mistake not setting a rig up at this depth but it didn’t work for me on my last visit , in the first hour i had eight f1s and when this line started to fade i set up a new one towards my right but feeding pellets this time because this was my best bait last time i was on here and a quick f1 hit the net soon followed by an f1 of around 4lb Bonus .

In the first two hours i had twenty fish in the net which was better than i had hoped for but i kind of lost the fish at this point for nearly an hour i had fed my channel line every 15 minutes with a kinder pot full of maggots since the start but i couldn’t get this right and i am really struggling to get this line to work . I began loose feeding six maggots every five minutes on to my top three-line towards the left of my peg first drop produced a big f1 and this got me another run off fish a bigger stamp than across too but i did need some were else to go when this line began to fade like it usually does when f1 fishing , with the wind beginning to get up and the sun going in it was noticeably colder so i decided to put in a new line across at 4 ft deep this got me another run of f1s and i rotated between both shelves to keep the fish coming but in the last twenty minutes they backed off and i couldn’t get a bite , which was my fault because i think that i had over fed and had not prepared some were else to go .

When the all out sounded i was unsure on how i had done and felt that both pegs 106 +108 had beaten me because they seemed to have caught a lot more consistently than i had so when the scales came round to me my 44 fish went 42lb which was more than i thought and better news was to follow when in fact i had won the section plus got second best weight on the lake Bonus number two . When i got to the cabin to pick up my money it looked like i might have also had a chance of framing too but not even i was that lucky and ended up 6th or 7th out of ninety anglers contesting the match with 60lb winning and a mid 50lb getting in the frame .

To be honest i was more than happy with the result but not really how i fished today i think it was another chance that i had blown for framing or even better and they don’t come along that often although i do seem to be getting more chances recently which goes to show that my fishing is improving after making the decision to quit my angling club , all i need to do is stop my mid match quiet spell which is easier said than done though plus like every match angler i could do with getting on the bank a bit more .