A nice smooth journey from South London found me arriving in the car park by 7·30am, closely followed by MarkC, Royst and Eric.The biggest shock however was the arrival of Malc (
The Jinx) and daughter Gemma (
The Minx) a whole hour before the draw!!!!!!! Soon it was time to dip the nets and face "THe Hill" down to the Match Lake and a waiting breakfast, and I have to say that it's a top brekkie that really sets you up for the day.
9am and it's draw time and a £1 side bet was agreed with The Minx before peg 3 stuck to my hand, a nice short walk. A quick chat with a couple of the
GOT anglers saw my plan of attack formulated for the 5 hours ahead and I was soon settled in with Chris BT for company on peg 2 and Phil Young
aka Madd on peg 4.
The plan was to be fishing on the deck at 12mtrs where it was about 3ft deep and to keep pinging a few pellets in to see if they would come up later while feeding a line under the bush to my left where hopefully a few lumps would show later. Bait wise I went with a mix of
GOT expanders and soft hookers with 4mm hard feed pellets.
At the all in I put a handfull under the bush and 2 pots of pellet out on the 12mtr line before going straight out over it. Within a minute I'd bumped one but next put in came back with a nice chunky Mirror around the 2lb mark.
Looking over to the other side I could see Wilky taking in the sun in his shorts and Matt stripped to the waist while I was shielded from the sun by the bush to my left and with the wind blowing towards me sat shivering in bib & brace and fleece, even Malc remarked on it when he came down on one of his customary wanders.
Matchwise it proved to be a bit frustrating as I suffered runs of unhittable bites and a number of foulhookers
. Laying a couple of inches of line on the deck, or moving up off the deck appeared to have no effect, with the fish only wanting it at dead depth and nothing showing under the bush. Numbers wise Chris and I probably had the same number of fish, but his appeared to be a better stamp.
Weigh in time rolled round at 3pm and it was noticable that the usual pegs hadn't produced while normally unfancied ones had and this was put down to the fact that ours was the 3rd match on the venue in 3 days. Never the less with a total weight of 1184lbs 12ozs weighed in between 20 anglers averaging out at just under 60lbs per peg it goes to show what a good venue Alders is.
Winner on the day was Vic Nugent who had 47 carp making up his winning bag of 111lbs 12ozs.
Many Thanks to Keith for organising the day, I certainly enjoyed it and will be back next Saturday to fish Matt Nutt's Charity match.