Milemead summer series round 1.

Thursday 13th May 2010.

Today was the first round and to be honest i didn't even realise until after i arrived in the morning. I pitched up at 10.00am planning for a days pleasure fishing and to dust of the cobwebs a bit. But when Paul informed me of the match i duly paid my pools then set of for what turned out to be a bit of vital practice. Ive been working on my pellet fishing on the deck for a bit, specifically hair rigging them. so with this in mind i set up 2 rigs to fish 2 lines at 10.00 o'clock and 2 o'clock. The first with a hair rigged hard pellet and the second with a spade end and an expander, both were to be fished dead depth over loose fed pellets. The other difference was that i would initially feed one line with micros and the other with 6mm pellets. I also set up a paste rig for the bottom of the near shelf and a shallow rig for the 13m line. After cupping in the loose feed it was obvious that fish had moved over the micros as bubbles were showing instantly. Whereas there was only a few pin pricks coming up from the 6mm pellet line. First put in on the 6mm line and i missed a bite, by lifting and dropping i soon had another and connected with a decent tench. I then pinged out a few more 6mm's over this line then moved over to the micro pellet line, bites came quickly on this line with more tench and skimmers. Moving back over to the 6mm line i connected with my first carp. I then fed the paste line and continued to alternate between both of the pellet lines picking off fish from each one. It was clear that this tactic was going to be quite productive with a mixture of species but my problem come matchtime was that i was going to need the carp. With this in mind I switched over to the paste line and began catching straight away, proper lumps as well. What was noticeable however was how quickly the carp drifted off and the tench moving in unless I fed a fair amount. Every time i potted in some bait i would get a run of carp and then tench followed by big skimmers. I did have a brief spell shallow, but to be honest after half an hour i knew it would be a waste of time.

Come 6.00pm and the match I drew peg 9, i was reasonably pleased because it was an end peg and there was only 2 of us down this end of the lake, the wind had also been blowing down there all day. I plumbed up and decided to fish a paste line at 9m and a paste line down the edge. I also had the method rod set up to chuck to the island. At the all in i fed my lines with a mixture of 80% micros and 20% 6mm's. I then chucked the method towards the island. The rod had only been on the rest 30 seconds before the tip flew around with a chunky 3lb mirror on the end. 10 more bite less minutes and i quickly changed to the paste line. I caught steadily for the full 3 hours and ended up with 56lb for second. I never bothered with the edge line as i didnt see any movement and just flogged the one line to death.