Back to Alders today to fish the match lake Ash, I last fished it on Saturday and did well from peg 13 which can be a bit hit and miss to record 187lb and 5th place. Today however numbers were really down on the last couple of weeks with only 5 in attendance where normally we are into double figures.
Still Mick was here so the MK Nugget was up for grabs. His 9-7 lead looks unassailable at the moment but the momentum is with me having won the last one.
As you can imagine with only 5 names down it did not take long to sort pegs and we settled on 2,4,6,8,and 13. And you can guess where I was again, yes 13.
Josh had drawn 2, Terry 4, Mick 6 and Charlie 8 so with good anglers on good pegs it would be close at the top and realistically last place was always on the cards unless the wind turned direction and blew the fish into the corner I was in.
I decided to just fish the margins today, I had caught at 2+2 on Saturday and did not have a bite down the edge. Today I was determined to catch down the side. I set up three rigs to fish on 2+2 down both sides. NG Edger floats in .2g to .18 Stroft and PR36 in 18 inches of water tight in and only a couple of inches deeper a foot out. Bait would be corn with about a pint of fishery 4mm pellet.
At the all in I threw around 8 grains of corn down both sides and decide to fish to the left hand swim. Repeating the process every 30 seconds saw carp in the swim relatively straight away although they were only small fish averaging 1 1/2lb. I could see into peg 14 and there were fish everywhere cruising around the reed beds. But it was too far to fish. After an hour I had around 20 fish for 30lb in the net and nothing over 1 1/2lb. I decided to switch to the right hand swim and although I had a couple of fish on a similar par to the left, a couple gave me encouragement as the touched 4lb.
However it was slow progress and I was having to wait for bites. No matter whether I upped or lowered the feed rate it was still a waiting game. I was now switching from left to right every 2 fish to try to get the fish to settle but this did not improve the catch rate. I shallowed up a few inches as I had caught a few crayfish and thought that if they were on the deck it might be deterring the carp from having a proper go. This got me a few fish and I found that by fishing around a foot further out from the bank and fishing shallower I managed a run of fish to 4lb. I was still swopping lines and this helped keep the bites coming but after 5 hours I reckoned I had around 120lb in the net.
Going into the last hour, things were getting harder. I added another section to the pole in case the carp had backed off and was now plundering the decision. A good run of fish falling to single corn with no feed going in a section past my original feed. In the last hour I managed around 50lb to boost my weight considerably. It just goes to show that fishing over your feed is not always the answer. On Saturday I ended up a metre short of my feed and today I had to go longer to get some better fish. I think that the bigger fish tend to hang off the main feed and just pick off odd bits as they come to them.
Overall it had fished well again. I ended up as predicted last, however I still had a days fishing and I learnt today. Mick extended his lead to 10-7 so I really have my work cut out to catch him. All the three leading weights came to maggot over groundbait.
1st Josh Blavins 376lb 15oz
2nd Charlie Lancaster 369lb 11oz
3rd Terry Lancaster 313lb 15oz
4th Mick Wright 242lb 12oz
5th Keith Ashby 179lb 5oz
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