Puddledock Farm Marsh AC 21 05 16

Another Marsh AC match on a venue that we only get to fish once a year and is difficult to work out a steady method for catching fish regularly. To do well on the Road Lake you need to catch carp and regularly. They are not big fish, 2 to 5lb average but you tend to get bitted out on small baits or expanders. I have had some success fishing catmeat on the long pole and waiting for it to bury, but felt this was no quite right.
Today saw Mick and I travel the relatively short journey to Essex for the match and surprisingly we were the first to arrive, a quick look at the lake and it had a decent ripple on one side, the other flat calm. Please put me in the ripple, I thought. First mistake of the day was changing the drawing pattern, I normally go towards the back of the queue, not today, get in before Mick was my strategy. After all, I won the last leg of the MK Nugget challenge. Peg 22 was to be my home in the flat calm. Mick waits and draws peg 2, right by the car park and the wind blowing into it.
We only fish for sections on these matches, it keeps it real, and with the most you are likely to win is a tenner, it normally costs more to fish than you will get back. So with this in mind I set out a stall to win the section. My section consisted of John Holdsworth, Tom Exell, Tony Watkins and Kevin Loveland.
I was today going to start of long on the pole at 12.5m with another line at 7m and a margin swim to my left. I also set up a shallow rig in case the fish came up in the water. It was cloudy but still warm.
At the all in I started off at 12.5m for 20 minutes on meat, this brought a few finicky bites which I never connected with, A look onto the 7m brought a small roach and a skimmer around the pound mark. At least I was off and running. At this point I saw a swirl over my 12.5m line and thought perhaps they were shallow. Grabbing the shallow rig I started lifting and dropping the rig and after 10 minutes, my first carp was on the way in, only to lose it at the net. Out again and pinging a few 4mms saw fish number 2 came cleanly to the net and around 2lb I was pleased. This carried on for around 2 hours, in between the carp, I was getting some nice roach around 8oz and odd skimmers all on either a small cube of meat or a 6mm pellet. I was being kept busy and I was enjoying it without really building a weight to compete. Still fish were going into the net.
During a lull in the proceedings I looked onto the 7m line and for an hour I was getting a skimmer a chuck and odd carp. I was going along quite nicely now. I had about 30lb of fish in the net, mainly skimmers and roach and 8 carp. A look on the catmeat did not bring any bites, so it was back out on the long pole for the duration. Fishing deep and up in the water brought a few more skimmers, and a couple more carp but it was not to be. I felt at the end of the match I had around 40lb and the scalesman gave me 39lb 8oz. so was not far away with my estimation.

Overall

1st Jim Boase       69lb

2nd Tony Roberts 66lb

3rd Mick Wright 54-08

4th Tony Watkins 52lb

5th Simon Watkins 48-08

6th Keith Ashby 39-08

To be fair the lake fished a lot better than previous years, a lot more carp coming out from all over the lake. Mick regained his nugget to make it 3-1 in his favour. Next up for me is in a fortnight, Hartleylands Farm Nicks Lake. Should be a good one.