Yesterday I weighed in 22lb 6ozs, and the nearest weight forecasted was 22lb 4oz by Shazza 1971. Well done Shazza.
Fishing was a bit hard with the fish seemingly shoaled up on the sunny bank and towards the top end of the pool, hoping to draw on the sunny bank and preferably at the top end where the wind had been blowing into all the week, the dip into the draw bag saw me draw peg 26, which is about half way up the pool on the cold side, well that was not the best of starts but peg 26 is usually worth a few fish, and is a peg that can win as it gets colder, pellet would be the main line of attack and a line at 6 metre was set up, along with the usual inside line which normally produces late in the match, feeling that the fish would not want a lot of feed I cupped in a small cup of micros and a few maggots on the 6 metre line, maggots were fed to my right hand margin and the left was a few pellets and a good squirt of Carp Vader Prawno.
The 6 metre rig was baited with 4 mm expander pellet pumped with a good squirt of Prawno and on the third put in away goes the float with the first skimmer of the day soon coming to the net, next put in saw the first small carp pulling a bit of elastic out, several skimmers followed, before I potted in another small cup of pellets along with a squirt of Prawno, a rush of three carp soon followed the biggest being about 2lb but foul hooked, the anglers opposite me were struggling as were the two anglers on the adjacent pegs, after about 2 hours i had a look at the margins but not a semblance of a bite, so it was out to the 6 metre line which had been fed again with micro pellets and a small pinch of maggot, a run of three or four skimmers ensued, so in with some more pellet and another good squirt of Prawno, this seemed to trigger the carp as three small specimens soon followed along with a couple of skimmers despite cupping in more pellets and Prawno things went dead, time for another look at the margins but apart from one fast bite nothing was playing in the margin, Dave H and Brian W were struggling to get a bite although Dave H did snare 2 carp from his margin swim. Time to go out over the 6 metre line and three small skimmers followed, time for some more bait to go in again it was micros and Prawno, this saw me have two more carp fairly quickly before the swim died for around an hour despite feeding with time running out another cupping of micros and Prawno saw two more bites that produced a small common and my biggest fish that was around 4lb.
Did the Prawno work as it was the first time I had used it, I think it did as fish seemed to respond after each cupping in unfortunately for me non of the better stamp fish put in appearance, but having beat the anglers either side of me I have the confidence to give it another go.
The match was won by David Kingerlee ( Big Knob ) with 97lb who was also on the golden peg, Keith Palfrey ( KP Nuts ) had the biggest carp at 8lb 5oz just beating Rob Swain ( Swainey ) who had one 8lb 2 oz
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