Up early for another open at Acorn and we’d had a wicked frost which was a bit of a shock to the system. I met Nick and after a quick stop for breakfast we made the short drive to the fishery, at the draw I continued my habit of drawing the same pegs when 36 attached itself to my hand. Not my favourite if I’m honest, it’s the deepest peg on the lake and also the coldest one as it’s in the shade. On the other hand, with the weather getting cold, the depth might be a good thing and also the silvers weights have been around 15lb in recent matches with most pegs capable of doing that.
The pond was flat calm
I set up a Drennan 0.4 gram Pencil for top kit plus one angled to my right and across at 11.5 metres where it was the same depth plus a 0.6 gram for down the middle in the deepest water. The side tray contained red and white maggots, disco pinkies plus some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark groundbait.
We got underway and I fed all three lines with a little nugget of groundbait and a few pinkies before starting at 11.5 metres. I thought we might be in for a slow start and I wasn’t wrong, 15 minutes passed without a bite so I came back into the deeper water at five sections. After a few minutes a slow, deliberate bite resulted in a decent fish but a 3lb mirror wasn’t my intended target.
My next fish was a nice skimmer and I was getting regular bites, with an hour gone I had three skimmers, a roach and two carp. Across on the island, Walshy and Rich L on the first two pegs were struggling although Mr Rayet on his favourite peg 5 was getting a few as was Mark B on 4.
The second sixty minutes was really good with more skimmers along with the odd carp and then I hooked a fish that I knew straight away was a tench from the jagging scrap and all the bubbles it was kicking up. It was a nice fish around 1.5lb followed next chuck by a bigger one of 3-4lb and it felt like a good weight was on the cards.
Mo over on peg 40 was also catching well including several decent tench whereas going into the third hour, although I was still getting regular bites, I was hooking more carp, including some rather lumpy ones! I decided to rest it so fed another little nugget and had my first look on the short line. After feeding it with maggots since the start I was expecting to catch quite quickly but after twenty minutes all I had to show for my efforts was two missed bites.
Going back across I had a roach, a perch of a pound but then got snapped by a carp, lost another that was foul hooked and landed one of 8-10lb. With an hour left I was hoping for a nice finish down the middle but despite it blowing like crazy, I’ve not had another bite. On the longer line I had a nice skimmer, a decent roach but was missing loads of bites and hooked several more carp including one I was still playing when the whistle went.
When Mark got round to me with the scales, Gary B was winning with 108lb 13oz from peg 30 with Martin Rayet in second spot with 83lb 3oz (including 19lb 10oz of silvers) and Mark W who weighed 76lb 12oz on peg 7. My carp went 56lb 3oz and the silvers added 18lb 7oz for a total of 74lb 10oz and I was just 2lb 2oz off third place but as Martin framed, I won the silvers by default.
Lovely fishing on cold day
1 – Gary Bowden (Acorn) – 108lb 13oz
2 – Martin Rayet (Acorn) – 83lb 3oz
3 – Mark Williams (Acorn) – 76lb 12oz
Sections
A – Brian Slipper (Acorn) – 51lb 7oz
B – Howard Green (Acorn) – 41lb 4oz
Silvers
Jamie Rich (Against Men and Fish) – 18lb 7oz
Nick and me added £2 each (for today and tomorrow) to the Nugget-O-Meter which has now reached £457.
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Next up – Trinity Waters
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
Check Out – My last match
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