Wednesday Open – 6th June

I’m up to my eyes in work (it’s what happens when you go fishing 3 days a week !), so I asked ‘Pikey’ Pearson (aka The Total Fishing Paste God) if he’d write something. You have to understand that he works for B.T. so has LOTS of spare time on his hands.

“Ross says he is too busy to Blog about the Wednesday match so I’m doing a bit of Guest blogging !

With the weather being sunny and hot, it was always going to be another tough match on the Top lake and I was more than pleased to draw Peg 2 – a very consistent peg with a bit of shade as well. And, with both Ross and Don drawing the main lake and not the back spit, I felt that I had a good chance of framing or even winning, especially with Ross on Peg 10 ! Eddie Green who had drawn Peg 13 FIVE matches in a row drew Peg 16 ! Incidentally, we worked out the odds of Eddie drawing Peg 13 five times in a row as 2,476,099 -1 I wish I’d had £1 on that !

Peg 2 is one I really like as there are lots of little “nooks and crannies” for you to fish. I usually pick 4 or 5 areas of the swim to feed and keep trying them all until you get some indications and start to catch. I have found before though that if you feed 5 spots, you will only catch on three of them and it isn’t always the same three.

My lines for the day were:-

1 Straight across in front against the under cut far bank.
2 In the bay to the left of the bridge.
3 At 10 metres in the shadow of the big tree – at about 2 o’clock
4 10 metres to my right under the trees
5 7 metres in the edge to my right.

Oh yes, I also set up a rig to fish under the bush to my left.

Most of my rigs were 4×14 Maver paste floats as I intended to feed a few pellets and fish paste over the top. Although I did set up a 4×12 Carpa Porth to fish corn across

To cut a long story short, after 2.5 hours I’d had one carp from under the trees and lost 3 foulhookers as nothing appeared to be feeding anywhere in the peg. I knew I wasn’t doing much wrong and just had to wait for the fish to feed, so I thought I might as well get my lunch box out and go for a quick walk. From what I could find out, nobody was catching much, Don had 3 carp on Peg 8 and Ross had caught 2 proper carp and a couple of smaller samples on Peg 10. On Peg 2, although you have lots of different areas of the swim to target, you can’t really chuck out a feeder, lead or waggler so it is just a question of plodding away and trying to make something happen.

Returning to my peg, I decided to concentrate on the 2 o’clock line and under the trees and after ten minutes I had my first “Proper” bite and my second fish. After three quick fish on that line, I re-fed it and switched to the right hand side under the trees. The wind was making presentation very difficult and I decided to come back a metre so that I could get better presentation. I did think about putting a big pot of pellets in to kick start the new line but figured that it was only 3 foot nearer than I had been fishing and the fish would soon find the paste if they really wanted it. Second cast in my “New” peg I had a fish of about 5lb and then caught another 3 smaller samples in the next 6 or 7 put ins. I continued to switch between the two productive areas, picking off a few fish from each one before switching to the other. I did have one brilliant period where it was like old times as I had 5 fish in a row where the float was in the water for less than 30 seconds before I had a bite ! Alan Harrington was well pleased for me as he was on Peg 22 and not catching at the time !

With an hour to go, the 2 o’clock line died and I switched to fishing across in the bay which was this time in the shade of the bushes – this was a good move as I added a another 4 or 5 fish from there plus a couple to my right before the final whistle.

As the scales arrived, I really wasn’t sure what weight I had and was pleased to see a final total of 117-8-0 recorded. I knew Don and Ross had caught a few and they weighed in 97lb and 65lb respectively for 2^nd and 3^rd place.
Dave Pearson Peg 2 117lb
Don Garnish Peg 8 97lb
Ross Nursey Peg 10 65lb
Graham Ford Peg 26 64lb

I really enjoy fishing at Willinghurst due to the people who fish it and it is certainly a challenge at the moment as you try to work out how to catch in the early part of the match. If someone can work it out, they are going to win a lot of money !

So that’s it for my guest blog – I’m sure Ross will be back soon and no doubt be blogging about how we won the Maver Pairs on Saturday week !”

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am and is filed under Fishing Matches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.