Maggotdrowning Alders Farm Pines 08 10 16

I have been a long standing member of maggot-drowning.com since the very early days of its inception. I think my membership number is in the early double digit country and have met some great people over the years, many of whom are friends outside of the forum. So when the chance to catch up with a few of the old guard appeared on the site, I stuck my name down for the saturday match. They had booked Alders Farm for the Friday and Saturday but due to work I was unable to fish both days. They had a good day on Ash Lake on the Friday with 199lb winning and nearly everyone having a ton plus weight so good tight fishing.
Todays Match would be on Pines Lake, a lake I do enjoy fishing, although never seem to do well on it. With Trevor Price doing his normal meet and greet service by the shop, making sure everyone had there bait and advice.
Anyway after devouring one of Charlotte's lovely breakfasts it was down to the draw. There was only 9 of us fishing, a couple of others had dropped out due to man flu, namely my mate and normal nugget bandit Mick. So no MK Nugget to play for today. Another is the main man himself Mr Dave Webster, or Wibblester for those in the know, who by all accounts caught his dose of man flu rebuilding a house for another maggot drowner, Pete Morton. So lets get this straight Pete, you work the poor man into the ground, he catches a sniffle and cannot attend the weekend, this is what you do to the owner of MDs. Your a bad man. Still nine anglers and a match was to be had.
At the draw, we had the near side bank on Pines 1-10, as there were a few pleasure anglers dotted about on the far bank. Garry had drawn peg 1, I took the last peg 2, Gingert76 Tony Leutchford on peg 3 and Mugger himself on peg 4, Dave Hart on 5, John Holdsworth and Clive Pritchard on 6 and 7 respectively, before pegs 8 and 10 were filled by Terry Pearce and match organiser Dave Pontin.
So peg 2, not one of my favourites, but today is a different day. I aimed to start off at 2+2 at the edge of the shelf fishing and feeding fishery pellet. I also set up another rig to fish just past the feed which was a heavier rig, in case they backed off a little and the wind got up. A couple of margin rigs to fish the reeds both sides, one would be fed with corn, the other pellet and a little corn.
At the all in I potted into the margins and started throwing pellet by hand, this was when I noticed a few 4mms taking a lot longer than normal to sink. I was feeding around two dozen pellets every minute and was wary of over feeding the peg early on, I wanted to feel my way in before upping the feed. I had my first fish after around 10 minutes and with both Tony and Gary having caught a couple I was behind already but a 5lb fish is a good fish. Another few minutes go by and a smaller fish was in the net. This is where it all started to go wrong, I was either foul hooking a lot of fish or simply just losing them off the hook. Elastics were set soft, hooks were sharp and I could not get to grips with it. Changing the feeding to a larger handful less often, settled the fish a little and after 2 hours I was going nowhere, I had a dozen fish for about 40lb. I asked Ginger how he was getting on and he reckoned on 30 fish. Garry was admitting to 25. I needed the margins to produce. I re-fed the edges and had a quick look for a 6lb fish, but nothing else was forthcoming. A couple of smaller samples came in the next hour on a margin rig over the 2+2 line, before I decided to concentrate solely down the edge. I could see the odd reed moving and decided to sit on a grain of corn. Ten minutes later and I was into a good fish, it did not pull or fight but came straight to the net, 10lb thank you. Out again and a couple of small carp about 3lb. I started to toss pot after each fish and this produce regular bites until the end. I reckoned of having caught around 100lb in the last 2 hours down the edge, all from the reed bed towards peg 1.
At the all out I reckoned on a conservative 130lb, admitting to 100lb. Garry and Tony had been catching throughout, and I honestly thought I was fishing for 3rd place at best.

Overall

1st Keith Ashby                           142-08

2nd Clive Pritchard                      127-00

3rd Tony Leutchford                    112-00

4th Dave Pontin                           103-00

5th Garry Toole                           101-00

6th Dave Hart                               96-08

7th Pete Morton                           93-08

8th Terry Pearce                           92-00

9th John Holdsworth                    38-00

A surprise win and it just goes to show that fish can turn up in your peg at any time, if they turn up early then you can have a big weight, if they turn up late, as in this case, then a good weight can still be had. I was surprised though that pegs 1 and 3, although they had caught a lot of fish, their's were a lot smaller than I thought.Never give up.