24th may 2007

Peg 3 on the match lake.

Milemead Summer Series. Round 3.

Fishing from 6pm-9pm, 16 of us pitched up for this one, even with a few of the regulars fishing the Stafford Moor festival.At the draw I pulled out peg 3 & was pleasantly surprised as it is the first time in ages that I have drawn it. To the left you have the island, but it shelves down very deep very quickly so is a bit of a red herring. It isn’t really in reach of a sensible amount of pole so the other options are the lead or pellet waggler. I chose to ignore it completely & concentrated on just the one line, shallow pole & hair rigged pellet at 13m straight out in front. I chose this simply because I have caught well there during pleasure sessions so was confident of a fish or two. I am continuing to use my shallow pole rig, only this time I set it up with only a 6inch hook length. These 3 hour matches are a bit hit or miss & you have to be positive if you wish to frame. Knowing that the big fish like to come very shallow, I decided on these as my target.Harry shouted the all in & I shipped out, I decided to try something slightly different this time & started feeding 8mm pellets very heavily. The idea was to try & get a bit of bait down on the deck & then draw the fish up. I could have used a pole cup but I like the noise of the pellets hitting the water.Unfortunately after about 25minutes I hadn’t had a bite, I had fed about half a pint of pellets So decided to cut right back & see if I could get a few up. It was obvious there was a few fish on the deck, mostly skimmers by the look of all the fizzing. After about 5minutes of feeding just 2-3 pellets I had my first bite as the pole slammed under, carp no.1 had hooked itself against the pole tip.Safely in the net it was a good one at about 3lb.The rest of the first hour was a bit disappointing as I only managed a few more carp & roach.I had to do something so I switched from an 8mm pellet on the hook to an 11mm. The reaction was instant as carp after carp hit the net. Funnily enough though bites were harder to come by If the bait was moving, I had to keep it dead still &just flick a couple of 8mmpellets at it every 5 seconds. Most of the fish hooked themselves against the pole, a bit like they do when you float it. I wasn’t complaining however as they were obviously competing well & that is how the fish wanted it on the day.So the next 2 hours were very productive, in total I probably added another 25 carp, which was quite pleasing. I finished with about 30 carp & 5 big roach for 61lb 4oz. I was last to weigh in & the top weight before me had been 49lb, so I had won quite easily. More importantly though I now have 3 points after 2 matches, if I can keep that up….well who knows?Crucially switching to that big pellet made all the difference. It would be tempting to try & fish the same way again on another day, but you never know how they want it, you just have to work it out, however I won’t be forgetting it in a hurry.