Milemead open.

Sunday 20th June 2010.

17 of us turned out for this one, which is reasonable for this little fishery. There are currently 3 golden pegs running with 2 of them capped at £100.00 and the other at about £40.00 odd.
I drew peg 22 and although optimistic I never really believed I had much of a chance, especially when Paul Carpenter told me he'd drawn peg 1 and John Hetherington had drawn 20. Anyway I went about my business setting up 2 margins rigs, an open water paste rig and a method rod for the island. The problem with this peg is that's its on the wrong side really and with 2 of us pegged in this little section and a flat calm surface, the carp were never going to settle. The fish in this lake have grown on well, but they are no longer naive and so take some catching. In fact i saw fish swimming in and out of this area all day and once they saw the nets or a reflection they just bolted off. After the all in I fed my lines and started on the method, but after a blank 15 minutes i had a look on my right margin as i fancied it for a few. one chub was all i could manage on meat, and after another 15 minutes i had a look on the paste line. First put in resulted in decent skimmer which in reality is a bad sign as you really need to get into the carp from the off. After another half an hour and just 1 carp on the paste i had a look on my left hand margin, but strangely didn't even have an indication, so it was back out on the method. This too was proving fruitless and so after a desperate first 3 hours i decided to concentrate solely on the paste line, with a little look in on the margins in the last hour. I decided to cup in some soft micros mixed with ground bait and fished small pieces of paste over the top and for the last 3 hours i caught a steady procession of skimmers and tench. With everybody else going for carp i had one eye on the silver fish pool. By fishing out the feed i kept the skimmer coming along with 5 more carp and finished up with 22lb of silvers and 15lb of carp and took the silvers pools. It was a bit of a frustrating day as i was fired up for the carp but never the less i taught myself a great deal about the peg and this particular area of the lake and it should stand me in good stead for the future. Tony Steele fished an absolute blinder and won with over 90lb on catmeat and paste and i was really chuffed for him, especially as he had been dreading this peg for weeks. Paul came in second from peg 1 with his usual professional display. The golden pegs have rolled over for another fortnight and Nick Gilberts paste floats performed brilliantly again as per usual. Full frame placings can be found by going to http://www.milemeadfisheries.com/