Sunday 22 April 2007

Milemead open.
From bad to worse.Due to the 2 day festival being cancelled 17 of us pitched up for this one. I had been keeping a close eye on the forecast all week, because we have had a number weeks of very favourable weather & I was concerned about it changing. Fortunately the forecast was mild again with long periods of sunshine, so you guessed it, as I arrived at the fishery it started raining, typical!!!!!Eager to get on with it I was first at the draw bag & out came 24...Now, you know at your regular fisheries there are always one or two pegs that everybody hates because they are devoid of fish & you question what sort of mad man would put the peg in the first place, well 24 is one of them. My heart sank to be honest as I knew I was in for a grueller, you see the peg itself is one of the most attractive on the lake. Being in a shallow bay there is a small island reachable with 13m to your left, a tasty margin to your right with some nice reed beds & a fair bit of open water out in front. It is one of those pegs that can become a bit confusing as you set up a multitude of rigs & rods to cover the posibilities.Harry blew the whistle & I went out at 13m in front with the intention of fishing the pellet shallow into that open water. After last weeks experience I played it slightly cautiously with the feed. An hour later I had a grand total of nothing, not even a bite….erm!!! Plan 2, out to the point of that island with a pellet waggler…another hour later & a slight improvement, no fish but 1 missed bite & bolting carp.Plan 3, I had been constantly flicking the odd pellet into that margin & so decided it was time to have a look, First put in a 8oz tench, O.K. better than nothing. Second put in a carp of 2lb. That’s better; I could do a weight at this rate. An hour later & guess what, no sign of any more decent fish.So with 3 hours to go I decided on all or bust move & concentrated on the pellet wag to that island. If I could get a good couple of hours out of it then a framing place wasn’t out of the question as the whole lake had seemingly switched off. So as it was with an hour to go, I had not even had a bite I decided to pack up early& tipped back a grand total of 2 carp, 1 tench, 1 roach & a gudgeon. The last half hour I sat & watched Eddie bag up on peg 20 on the pellet wag…….. Well at least I got the method right.So there you have it, one of nightmare days that gets you questioning your own sanity…..so much for drawing peg 19 & doing 150lb…..still there is always next week.