October

Apologies first. I haven't written anything since my trip to Whiteacres. I think my confidence took a knock in that week and my fishing since hasn't really been good. And I didn't want to depress readers with my failures.

That said, I'll carry on.

Biggin Lake, Oundle, Peg 44

The day started badly with me taking a dive into the lake to prevent losing a rod on the first cast. I had foolishly clipped up so I could hit the same spot on this large natural lake. An obviously big carp had the rod off the rests in a second and I had to make a quick decision whether to go after it or lose the rod. Luckily it was a warm day. I lost the fish though. Funniest part was when a mate told me to grab my landing net handle he was offering to help get me out. Its a take-apart handle!

The fishing was for me poor. I had 33lb, winner had 105. All feeder/straight lead caught fish. Late on my neighbour had two fish of 21lb each in the margins. I had fish there but couldn't catch them.

Toft Carp Lake, Peg 8

End peg on the day but I wasn't able to make the most of it. I don't think I could have competed with the pegs that had a chuck to the island. Mine was open water and while I did get a few on the feeder they weren't there in enough numbers to make me competitive. I also had some fish at 8 & 13 metres but these lines died. On this peg there is a margin shelf around 2 ft deep going out a fair way. There were fish on the shelf but I couldn't get them interested. I may have been too close to the bank and should have concentrated just at the drop off point.

Ended with 51lb, third in my section of five which was won with over 100lb.

Biggin Lake, Oundle, Peg 51

Didn't dive in this time, but result was the same. A struggle and a total of 33lb that put me only five pound off third place.

Fished the feeder and bomb & pellet most of the day. Due to the size of the fish in the lake I don't like using a pole there. But I did fish paste in the margins on a rod & line and took one fish there. Despite others turning up that was the only one.

This was a day when I should have taken earlier notice of the pleasure anglers on the opposite bank. While I was struggling a group of young lads where catching the occasional decent fish on lead & boily. I eventually twigged and switched my bomb for a small white boily and had two or three fish in the last hour. An earlier switch may have seen me catch enough to take top spot for which I would have needed over 55lb.

One footnote about the unpredictable nature of angling. The winner of the previous match (105lb) drew the same peg and had around 15lb.

Decoy Horseshoe Lake, Peg 6

As we had had a cold snap I decided to feed very negatively. Something I have noticed with Decoy in the Winter. You don't need to feed loads to get the fish interested and staying around. So I plumped for the pole at topkit+3 as a good line on a still day. Feed was three maggots and around 20 micro pellets. Hookbait was 4 & 6 mil pellet or double red maggot and I think one or two on corn.

This negative feeding brought F1s to the net in bursts. Two or three fish then quiet for a while but I wasn't willing to change anything as I was beating everyone around me. I also tried the right margin and had a few fish from that. But I think I may have neglected the +3 line while trying to make the margin work and subsequently when returning to it I struggled to repeat the consistency of earlier in the day.

Ended with 61lb which was enough for third. But it could have been second. That went to a net of 68lb. While he had a load of fish in ther last half hour I didn't have any. And we had agreed to extend the finish time to 3:30 instead of 3:00. Had we finished that half hour earlier I think second would have been mine.

Share this post