Milemead fisheries open.
Clear skies, about 10-12 degrees with very little wind was a welcome sight to the 15 of us that had booked in on this regular bi-weekly Sunday open at Milemead fisheries in tavistock. Pre match banter was a bit flat because of an outstanding issue that had to be clarified regarding pole length limits. With that out of the way the draw commenced & feeling confident of a good days sport I went into the draw bag about mid way. I pulled peg 16 out & proceeded to walk up to the lake fairly pleased with myself.As you approach the match lake, Peg 16 is situated at the opposite bank. As you arrive at the peg the most obvious feature is an island about 16-17.5m away. The island is about 35-40m long and is closer to the near bank at each end; the bank is like a half moon shape so it provides quite a nice retreat for fish. Recently the owners had cut all of the overhanging vegetation away from the island so what was left allowed you to get tight over. This is very welcome & as long as they maintain it I can see the peg becoming a flyer in the warmer months. The only problem is that the whole peg is very shallow; from your feet to tight over you only have a maximum of 2 foot. With this in mind & a reluctance to fish my Trabucco gm carp 1 pole at 16m all day, I decide to set up 2 waggler rods.Fishing a little 3bb waggler tight over alternating either maggot or soft pellet was the plan, carefully loose feeding 3-4, 6mm pellets would hopefully draw a couple of fish at a time. If I could pick them off then 50lb wasn’t out of the question. With recent winning weights at about that weight I was reasonably confident of framing.First I had to plumb up against that island and draw the rig back slowly to get the exact depth & see if there were any drop-offs. Using a swan shot on the hook to act as a plummet I soon found out that tight to the island was 6 inches deep, coming back about a foot is suddenly dropped off to about 18-24 inches, Weird! It didn’t leave me with to many options really. I decided to set my float at that 18 inches & fish at the bottom of that drop of. Later on having a look at that very shallow 6 inch line tight to the island.Harry The bailiff sounded the all in. First cast and I flicked the waggler over towards the island. You guessed it snagged up on the only bit of twig that was left there, & I found it….typical. I pulled for a break & the 0.13 bottom went at the loop. Grrrrrr!!!!!After attaching a new hook length I cast over again with double maggot on the hook & catapulted 4/5 pellets over the top. The float dipped & that familiar sideways pull led to a nice 3-4oz roach. This continued for about 15minutes, I wasn’t too bothered about the lack of carp activity as the plan was to build the swim slowly & carefully, teasing the carp into having a go. After about half an hour the float went again, I struck only this time I could feel the resistance of something better. A swirl on the surface showed me it was carp no.1. A brief spell & a 1lb stocky was in the net.After the first hour I had 3 carp & a handful of roach for about 6lb.Pleased with this but decided that I needed to get amongst more of the carp, so on went a 6mm Ringers soft pellet. First cast…bang, carp no 4 safely in the net & a better one to at about 2lb.For the next half hour I couldn’t buy a bite on the pellet so after seeing a small carp cruise tight to the island I decided to shallow up & get right in close to the far bank. Pinging pellets with the catty right up close & I started to catch again with what turned out to be the biggest fish of the day with a carp of around 5-6lb. Nice!!!! A few more of those & we shall be well away or so I thought.Now here is the bit where it all goes wrong as it so often does. I guessed by know I had about 12lb, but felt I needed to make something happen a bit quicker, so I upped the feed, BIG mistake. The problems started because the odd pellet was going up onto the bank. No problem I though until a pair of ducks decided it was lunch time. Not content with the pellets on the bank, the bloody things decided to invade my shallow swim. The only thing I could do was to stop feeding & hope they would bugger off.Finally they did but it had cost me time & knocked my rhythm, not to mention ballsed up my swim.Oh well I thought, I shall just have to persevere & build the swim again. An hour goes by & I have only added one more carp to the net when Daddy duck decides to come back for dessert. Well it turned out to be a tale of cat & mouse or duck & angler so to speak. I had to feed to keep the fish coming but in doing so that bloody duck spooked everything that swam.In the end I managed to add a few more pasties for an estimated 20.lb. Geoff Andrew to my right had bagged down the margins later on & won the match with 56lb, at least my target was correct. Gordon Maerrs had 34lb to my left fishing similar to myself (minus the ducks). So it looked like my 24lb8oz might be enough for third. It was, until Stuart Snape, the last to weigh in piped me into fourth with25lb 7oz.Bugger I thought if it wasn’t for those bloody ducks…..never mind, Guess what I am having for Sunday lunch next week?
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