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.