Again, shift work has got in the way of fishing any of the regular Alders Tuesday matches so with my day off work scheduled for Wednesday, it was off to Oakfield fishery near Aylesbury. They have regular opens on Red Kite Lake, a lake with a good mix of carp and F1s.
Pulling into the car park I could see Mick's car. Sitting in the cafe he was waiting for his turned over eggs breakfast to arrive. Standing in the corner was Storming Norman, always good to see and a genuine nice bloke, who has made friends all over the country. He is back on the road to recovery and was feeling better than he has in the last three years. I am sure everyone wishes him well.
There was 15 of us fishing the match with seven on the far bank and eight on the near side. Alan Foulkes took over the draw as regular organiser Pete Alland would be late. After a chat with Mick, I decided to go into the tumbler first for a change. Peg 35, end peg on the near bank. I would have the wind coming over my shoulder, whilst Mick would have to face the wind with peg 12.
I decided to set up a maggot feeder for fishing towards the bare bank and aerators to my left, a 12m pellet line, a 5m maggot line and an edge line towards peg 34. Bait was 2pints of dead reds, a pint of live ones along with a few 6mm hookers and expanders. Feed wise I also had a bag of fishery micros.
I fed my pole lines to start with and then fished the feeder for around 45 minutes but apart from a couple of liners I had no takers. Bob on the next peg was already into a couple of F1s fishing long. So, I had a look over the 12m with a 6mm expander, a couple of roach and gudgeon but no F1s or carp. At this point I started feeding dead maggots on this line. A look on the 5m line brought me another couple of roach but still no carp. Back onto the feeder for 30 minutes where I had a single 9lb carp tight to the mudline. Then nothing again.
Going back out to 12m, I was now getting a few indications on maggot. A couple of lost fish which felt foul hooked before again dying. 5m line just brought more and more roach or gudgeon, so I decided on fishing the edge in front of the platform. I had around 2ft, a metre away from the platform and concentrated my efforts here. Five maggots impaled on a size 16 KKBM. Feeding regularly via a toss-pot I was again soon getting a few bites but although a few were again foul hooked, a few couple of F1s were hooked in the mouth. Switching to a lighter elastic helped as this was far more forgiving.
At the end I weighed in 30lb for nowhere, still enough to take a MK Nugget off Mick, who weighed in 22lb from his peg on the opposite bank.Richard ives won the match with 75lb with Bob ??? second with 69lb. A couple of 40lb weights were recorded but overall the lake fished well on the near side bank in the middle of the lake. The corners and far bank struggled.
Keith 13
Mick 6.
