The weather forecast was pretty grim for the penultimate match although it wasn’t as windy as they said it would be. At the draw everybody wanted a corner peg per usual and when it was my turn there were only about eight pegs left and all the corners were still there. Did I draw one? did I hell as like! Peg 15 (for the third time) was my destination and as I hadn’t done very well off it previously I wasn’t optimistic.
I set up two Trabucco rigs, one for up in the water at 11 metres and the other for the inside lines. The whistle went and after cupping in pellet, corn and hemp on the insides, I started on the long line. I was feeding 4 mm Ringers commercial pellets with a 6 mm Sonubaits S-Pellet on the hook. After half an hour I was still biteless and from what I could see nobody was catching much. Another 15 minutes passed and I was beginning to think about trying something else when the elastic was ripped from the end of the pole and I quickly netted a small common of a 1lb or so. I stuck with it but no mores bites were forthcoming.
I tried both insides with corn and pellet but apart from the odd small dip on the float I remained stuck on one fish. Chris Haines and Oz opposite me had both had a couple of decent fish and Les Braunton had caught four and was doing well. It seemed it was fishing really hard, I kept switching between my three lines but was rapidly becoming bored with the lack of action. I knew I wouldn’t be using two nets today!
With an hour left (yes the five hours previous had been that exciting!), Janders walked up for a chat, he’d had one small carp and a couple of bits so I reckoned I needed another fish to take the pound off him. With ten minutes to go I slipped two red maggots on and the float sailed away and I had a roach of around 2oz and that was it. In hindsight I should have fished the maggot all day and just fished for bites. I took my kit back to my car and passed several anglers who’d had similar days to mine.
As usual the scales started at peg 1 and Dave Lawrence had struggled weighing 4lb 8oz, nobody had caught much until we got to Hainesy who had 14lb 6oz from peg 5, the next decent net was Les who had eight carp for 15lb 4oz. Dave Abrahams on peg 10 put a respectable 19lb 6oz on the scales followed by Graham ‘Dino’ Pepper on 11 who had 37lb 14oz. Dino’s weight was helped considerably by carp of 16lb 9oz and 9lb 14oz. Mike Hosgood did excellently off of unfancied peg 12 with carp and bream weighing 30lb 8oz. Janders had found another carp and weighed 4lb 8oz to take a pound off me. My two fish weighed 1lb 6oz for second from last on the pond. I also lost a pound to Picky who had 7lb 10oz.
So all in all not a good day. I’m back at Dillington next week so lets hope I fare a little better then.
1 – Graham Pepper (Taunton) – 37lb 14oz
2 – Mike Hosgood (Exeter) – 30lb 8oz
3 – Dave Abrahams (Chard) – 19lb 6oz
4 – Les Braunton (Chard Remains) – 15lb 4oz
Section winners
A – Chris Haines (Haines Angling) – 14lb 6oz
B – Mike Collins (Tatworth) – 3lb 2oz
C – Alan Gage (Chard) – 7lb 10oz
