Six Island, 19 July 2009

By Trev:

Speaking to the owner Pete Band in the shop before the match, he advised a softly-softly approach to the feeding as they had an incredible three inches of rain on the Friday including massive hale storms that had chilled the water considerably. With the lay of the land cold water was still seeping in to the margins making them considerably cooler than the main body of water. 

I pulled peg six and in true fashion moaned. Martin Parker raved about it stating I should plumb up on bottom of the shelf on the island as well as fishing shallow close to it. Now, I don’t know what pole he has but mine doesn’t reach the necessary 20 metres it would take to get there? 

I arrived at my peg and stuck my arm in the water. It was very cold.

I set up half of Shelton’s tackle shop which included the pellet waggler, (that being a short thin pole with strange twists of wire down it), a at-depth 0.5 gram rig on a white-hydro as a scratch rig, a 4x12 sweetcorn margin rig for my right hand side swim, a 0.5 gram meat rig which I plumbed up on a small shelf between the margin and full depth. It was about eighteen inches deeper than the margin and eighteen inches shallower than main depth. It was also just off a bush to my left with the prevailing wind banging in to that bank. I also set up two up-in-the-water rigs to bag on banded pellet….. 

The wind was at Hooley strength, but I thought at the whistle I would start on the pellet waggler to the island hooking a carp first put-in and promptly losing it. After a few more chucks in to the wind and vain attempts to loose feed a tight pattern of pellet it went up the bank. 

I was feeding hemp and luncheon meat on my meat swim, hemp and corn on the two others. I kept pinging pellet on my “banker” up-in-the-water swim although in the wind the feed pattern was a bit “loose”. 

I had chopped a few worms only bringing the few I had left over from Beastie and cupped them in on my scratching full-depth 3+3 swim. The float immediately buried to a 1.5lb tench. A couple of F1 and a small barbell quickly followed but with little worm left I decided to cup in 4mm soft pellet and leave it. 

A quick look on both corn swims brought the inevitable zero and so I slipped a piece of luncheon meat directly on to my size 12 Drennan power barbless hook 0.14 to 0.16 with a 0.5 gram thick bristle float. I was using a toss-pot for the meat but cupping and throwing, (for the noise) hemp over the swim. I missed the first bite but hooked and landed a 5lb lump on the second. 

Although I topped up and tried all the swims throughout the day, I kept on the meat swim catching lumps regularly throughout the match. Hours three and four were the most productive mainly as I had to thin the meat feed down as I was running out of the four chopped tins I had prepared. Interesting I could not buy a bite on a 6mm soft pellet or sweetcorn over the meat swim. At one stage I was fishing a yard off the feed area as it was liner-city directly over it. 

Although I fed it when I went for my third net, it took ages to get a bite on my return. True to form, I also did not get a bite once the lads on horseshoe started to pack up. Clearly the bank disturbance is a factor.

I was pleased that my clicking was far more accurate than I thought with a 46lb and 48lb first two nets with a round 40lb in the third making the 134lb total. 

I had used, 4 tins of meat, a few worms, 4 cans of can that produced nothing and pinged pellets all day to no avail.

Great match though with Ray to my right realising where I was fishing in the last two hours and bagging like crazy to pull him up to third in section. Ronnie was always a threat in the corner but the cold water put pay to his shallow peg and he done well to finish second.