Alders Farm Affordable Pines Lake 16 09 14

For the last few weeks we have been enjoying ourselves on Oaks Lake at Alders Farm. Today, however, saw us fishing the prolific Pines Lake. My favourite lake on the complex. Although, I have only ever won match on there, I have performed consistently over the years and feel at home there with a variety of methods changing throughout the year.
We only had 6 anglers booked onto the match and decided to peg only on one bank giving everyone a bit of room. Charlie had drawn peg 31 in the corner, Richard was on peg 3, myself on 4, Trevor on 6, Ken on 8 with Terry on peg 10.
I opted to fish 3 lines today, one at top three straight out, another at top two to 2o'clock and a margin rig to my left on a top two. Bait would be corn, both gelled and stinky, and expander down the edge. Feed would consist of 3 kilo's of corn and a couple of pints of 4mm fishery feed pellets. At the all in I fed a pot of pellet down the edge and threw a dozen grains of corn on both the other lines and started feeding 4 grains every 20 seconds on the top three line. I was soon into carp and around 3lb apiece was happy with the size of fish coming to the net. After an hour I had around 15 fish for close to 50lb and felt I was catching well for a good weight. I tried the top two right line after this initial burst and although was catching I was having to wait for a bite where on the top three line I would get an indication within a minute of the float settling.
Richard was catching well on paste on peg 3 and I could hear a lot of splashing from Trevor's peg. Although if you believed him he was only catching "twisters". Charlie was plodding away and sneaking a few maggot fish in from 31. Ken and Terry I could not see but word was Terry was catching a few on 10.
Hour two and three were fairly consistent, again putting around 15 fish in each hour for a total of around 140lb. Hour four I made the decision to come closer to a top two, in the hope of speeding up my catch rate and also to see if any larger fish were lurking just off the feed area. I also upped my feed rate to around a dozen grains every 20 seconds. I was getting a few fish with this new feeding regime but also getting a lot of foul hooked fish. A change of depth resulted in a few more fish but my catch rate had slowed considerably. I was also loosing fish off the hook, not foul hooked fish but hooked in the mouth and pulling out of fish whilst landing them. I felt I needed to do something to combat this and changed the hook from a B911 to PR36 and this helped solve the problem.
With around 180lb in the net going into hour five, I decided to have a quick look down the margin. I had been feeding 4mm pellet regularly throughout the first few hours and started to get a few fish from the left hand side on expander. But, these were smaller fish around 2lb each. Back out to the top two and with the change in hook pattern meaning lost fish were a thing of the past I was getting a good run together. Fish around the 3-4lb mark were soon boosting my weight. My last two hours I placed around 120lb in the net and felt that without those lost fish I could have framed.

Overall

1st Trevor Price           536-04

2nd Terry Lancaster    375-10

3rd Richard Brain        369-08

4th Charlie Lancaster  368-04

5th Keith Ashby          314-10

6th Ken                        218-04

A frustrating day for me, I got it wrong on two fronts, wrong choice of hook pattern, the difference between the two hook patterns were remarkable, I felt the B911 were too springy and flexing too much and indeed had two hooks pull out of shape during the match. Also I felt upping the feed was a wrong decision, I should have kept fish coming and not change my original feeding strategy. So two lessons learnt.