April 19th , peg one
After Thursdays match at Partridge lakes where i had a reasonable match but left with plenty things to improve on i decided to have a trip to Sycamore fishery my local F1 water situated in Golborne , after ringing the owner to book on he told me that he expected at least thirty anglers on the open so it might fish hard this didn’t really bother me because my last few wins on here have been when there had been a full lake as i am not really a big weight type of angler more your scratch for bites which is what you usually need to do on here when it is full .
On arriving at the complex even though i knew there was a lot booked on i was still surprised at the amount of cars present and i did my usual thing of driving down to the bottom car-park then having a look at the two match canals for any fish movement which there wasn’t but it had turned rather cold compared to the previous few days sunshine we were also faced with an easterly breeze , when i got back to the cabin there was even more cars present it turned out we had forty anglers fishing two full canals not exactly a fun days fishing ahead although when i pulled out corner peg one on Silver birch ( Another flyer ) out of the draw bag i expected to have a good framing chance from their .
I decided to try something a bit different regarding bait and choose worm+caster instead of my usual pellet approach (wrong choice) as i had plenty of it left over as i had bought some for Partridge lakes open on Thursday where it had worked well but not on Covey five which is where i had drawn , when i got to my peg i had a long reed covered margin which had the cold wind blowing into it and the point of the island a lot for me to attack but it can get a bit confusing so i decided to set up two rigs one at 2ft the other at 1ft this should cover most areas of my peg but on the spur of the moment i also set up a shallow rig as their was a few fish topping near the post .
When the all in sounded i shipped out to six meters along my left hand margin i deposited a kinder pot full of worm+caster i then lowered my rig in among it with an inch segment of worm on the hook i then proceeded to wait and wait and wait some more , after twenty minutes of inactivity i decided on a re-feed even though nothing much was happening anywhere on the canal and after thirty minutes i had my first indication which took me by surprise so i immediately struck at it (still in pellet mode ) of course i missed it and nothing else happened so after a ten minute wait i feed again trying to force the fish to come in the peg this kind of worked because i the lost two foul hooked carp in quick succession not exactly what i was looking for . I then set up a new margin swim at 11 meters but feed just casters this produced a couple of indications nothing positive though ( things weren’t looking good )
Over an hour gone with no fish in the net which was like most anglers around me so a change of swim was in order so i went to the far-bank and tapped in a ball of worm+caster but this failed to produce any indications after thirty minutes , so i figured that with the cold overnight temps the fish must have dropped into the deeper water i got off my box and set up a new rig for fishing on the bottom of the near slope at 5ft this produced a few indications but yet again nothing positive i think the fish were being drawn in by the ground-bait but didn’t want the worm or caster ( took the wrong bait ) with half the match gone and still a big fat blank the cold wind was making me shiver too .
After three hours the sun finally came out which raised the temperature a lot the wind even changed direction this took the scum from out of my margin enabling me to fish tight to the bank so i started a new swim at six meters in one foot of water and tapped in a pot of worm+caster slop then went over the top with an inch segment of worm on the hook , this finally produced a couple of proper bites which i missed by being to eager on the strike so i made an effort to count to three when the float disappeared and this worked because my next bite ripped the elastic out ( finally a fish in the net ) a couple more quickly followed and i hopped that i had finally found a few fish i had a quick burst of five carp beginning to get on level terms with those anglers around me but this swim soon died so i tried setting up another one at 11m and at 4m but after working all these three swims i remained bite less for the last hour which was a bit disappointing because i felt that i only needed two more fish for me to get in the money .
As the all out sounded it was the end of a bad match which was always on the cards with the bigger than average turn out on here today , their was plenty anglers not deciding to weigh in today especially from those pegs down the bottom end of the canal and to be honest i wasn’t going to bother either as i knew i wouldn’t be in the top two but the lad weighing in for third had a similar amount of fish as me so i decided to chance my arm . When the scales came round to me Ste Hart was leading with 18lb from peg 19 and he fished really well to catch that weight picking up a few fish from various parts of his peg , the lad next to me on peg two got second with 16lb and the guy on peg three got third with just 10lb knocking me into forth with just 8lb and as i feared an extra carp or two would have got me into the money .
I am hoping to get out fishing for a few hours after work in the week to try to get back in the swing of catching a few fish as i have my first Fisho qualifier of the year at Moorlands fishery on Saturday some were that i haven’t seen before so i am really looking forward to contesting that match .
matthews580 