More shitty weather was forecast and I wasn’t really up for this one at all. At the draw only six other anglers turned up so Les decided it would be draw and choose, amazingly I got choice one and decided to go for peg 11, one of the consistent corner pegs. Les was paying out the top two and two sections so I only had to beat three people to pick up some money to stop this poor run that is picking up pace.
The peg looked good although the dark clouds overhead didn’t. I set up a 0.4 gram Drennan Carp float to fish at 11 metres and a 0.1 gram Trabbucco to fish along the edges. Both had 0.14 mm bottoms to Fox Carp Match hooks. On the whistle I cupped in some chopped worm at 11 metres and some pellets, corn and hemp along the edge of the pond at about 8 metres. Opposite on peg 10 was Rocking Roy and we enjoyed the usual banter, he reckoned I’d win it today although I wasn’t so sure. I started on the longer line with double red maggot on the hook and didn’t get any indications for three quarters of an hour and then it didn’t develop into a strikeable bite.
I came in on my other line by some dead reeds and debri and fully expected to catch straight away, which I did but they were only small rudd. Roy was in the same boat and a bank walker confirmed that only two small carp had been caught around the pond so it was still anybodys match. In amongst the hail and rain the sun would put in an appearance and it was actually quite nice although it never lasted long. I kept swopping between my lines and trying maggot and corn hookbaits but all I could catch was the odd little rudd and roach.
This pattern continued with the only elastic stretcher being a perch of around half a pound. My nemesis Janders had an early carp and a skimmer so my pound looked like it would be heading his way again. The last hour arrived and Roy sprung into action and landed five carp quite quickly before losing three. He said he was on a lighter rig and in the back of my mind I had this niggling thought that perhaps I should scale down to 0.12 mm but didn’t for fear of losing anything I hooked. I needn’t have worried though because I didn’t hook a carp all day.
Sweet relief came in the form of Les shouting all out, I quickly packed up and took some of my stuff back to the car. I asked Janders how he’d got on and he’d ended up with three carp, Alan Dunn had caught four, Les had three, Bushy six and Roy finished on five. So let alone win the match, I was last on the pond! I tipped my fish back and drove home without watching the weigh in. I knew I should have scaled down but I never felt at any time like there were many fish in the swim.
I’m really not enjoying this venue at all and just can’t get my head around it, perhaps next Sunday will be better – pah!
