It's always nice to fish somewhere nearby that you have not fished in a long while and Lakeview is one of those venues. It is only around 15 miles from the house and I must admit I drive past it on a few occasions. Last year I was fortunate to win a charity match in aid of Willen Hospice and in honour of a fellow angler, John Tipple who sadly passed away. As defending champion I was asked again to fish and was only too pleased to oblige.
Seeing as I had not fished it, for about 8 years, A couple of lads had put me straight, namely Tony Wynnick and Lol Summers. Meat, meat and more meat. Cheers guys.
With everyone meeting at Jacks café, Troy Hillyer, Chris and I set off to place peg markers down. We had been told to leave out as much as possible on the lawn bank, closest to the house, by the owner, so with this in mind we placed 4 pegs on the spit, then followed around the lake to peg 18 leaving 2 pegs on the lawn. To be honest I did not have a clue which is a good peg and which is a bad one, I just had meat, meat and more meat going through my head.
With breakfast out of the way, it was time to buy some raffle tickets and draw my peg. In goes the hand and peg 3 sticks to it. Half way along the spit. ?????????? Troy had drawn 13 and would be ok for a £1 side bet and with Chris drawing 20 and another side bet we set off.
Once negotiating a path to the peg with the trolley, it was time to set up. Hopefully my main catching line would be at 2+2 in around 3ft of water, however I also had 2ft down the edge so could not neglect that. I set up a MW Diamond to fish at depth at 2+2 with a strung out shotting pattern to a size 14 PR36 and orange vespe set very soft. For down the edge I settled on a NG Margin float to another PR36 and bulked the shot around halfway. I also set up a shallow rig for catching up on both lines if needed.
At the all in I started by potting a half pot of meat and pellet onto both lines and fished the deep rig at 2+2 with a cube of 6mm meat on the hook, a few dips and nothing, then a roach followed by another, this was not in the plan, however after around 15minutes I had a carp around 2lb and this was followed by his slightly smaller sister. I started pinging a few cubes out and was getting no indications except tiny dinks on the float that I could not hit. A look on corn over the same line produced nothing, so kept plugging away on the meat.
After an hour I reckoned on around 8 carp and a few silvers for around 10lb and was going nowhere, although the only person I could see catching was Troy and could hear Chris behind me catching well. I had a look down the edge and this only produced one roach so back out to 2+2, I kept plugging away and although I was catching felt I needed to up the pace to compete for a frame place( my target). I upped the feed and this seemed to trigger a small shortlived golden spell where I had around 6 fish in 6 put ins but the stamp was better. I was now getting line bites as the rig dropped through the water and gave the shallow rig a whirl. A few fish slapping the shallow rig fell to the meat and at around the 3 hour mark I reckoned on 25 fish for around 50lb and around 5lb of roach. Hour four was too prove costly as I could not get a run of fish together, swapping between meat,stinky corn shallow and an 8mm banded pellet.
Going into the last hour I gave the stinky corn a proper go shallow and started feeding a few grains with around 20 pellets every 30 seconds. This seemed to do the trick and I was now getting regular bites, foul hooking a couple and putting a few in the net, but a good 25lb came in the last hour. With the all out imminent I had one last go and was rewarded with my biggest fish of the day at 6lb 11oz (all fish over 4lb needed to be weighed and returned).
I thought I would end up third, considering that both Troy and Chris had been catching consistently, however I did not know that Dave on peg 17 had been catching well until the weigh in.
I had predicted that 90lb would win today and although I reckoned on 80lb did not think I had done enough, hour 4 had cost me and do not really know why I could not catch regularly throughout the match.
1st overall and John Tipple Memorial winner was Dave with 90lb 1oz followed by yours truly with 80lb 1oz, Troy was third with 78lb 6oz with Chris fourth with 70lb 4oz, so it was quite close with no out and out winner running away with it.
On another note plenty of money was raised for Willen Hospice, which Mercedes Benz have agreed to match. Thanks to everyone fishing and those behind the scenes.
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