After my last 2 matches on the Island Pond, I was hoping for a better draw for this week's Wednesday match. The ice from Sunday finally cleared on Tuesday and the overnight temps had reached 8 degrees, so I hoped the fish would be a bit more spread out. However, on arrival at the fishery, there was a strong westerly blowing and the water looked fairly choppy. It's never easy in the winter.......
So, to the draw, which saw me get P22 - which I'd never fished. Kind of in the middle as far a water depth goes, so I was hopeful!
I've been using expander pellets soaked in water with an OXO cube for a few weeks now, so given the temp had been (correctly) forecast to be a fair bit higher, I decided to try something new, by adding Thai Fish Sauce to the water instead of OXO. But I did take some OXO pellets left over from Sunday just in case :-)
Once at my peg, it was fairly obvious that fishing the far shelf was a non-starter due to the strength of the wind, so I opted for the bottom of the shelf, and managed to find an area that was an inch or so deeper that the surrounding bottom. I also plumbed up a rig for the far shelf as the wind was forecast to reduce as the day wore on.
I had my first fish after 10 mins, an F1 of around 1.5lb and this continued for 3 hours or so with a bite every 10-15 mins - I missed a few, and lost 3, one of which would have been a PB tench of over 4lbs, which rolled just as it came to the net and the hook came out :-(
But, I didn't have time to worry about it as at that time, bites were still coming.
Every 3rd fish, I'd try the OXO pellets, but I didn't get a touch on them all day, despite the temp dropping to 5.5.
So, with 2 hours to go I reckoned on having 25lbs in the net. Bites became a lot harder to come by from then on, and I managed to get a rig onto the far shelf when the wind dropped, but nothing doing. Reverting to the bottom of the shelf, I managed another 5 fish to finish the match with 33lbs - 14oz - my second biggest match weight and my 3rd 30lb+ in 3 weeks.
There wasn't much action either side of me but I could hear Derek 'Deek' Brady and Barry Lindsay exchanging banter on the far side of the island and knew that Deek was the guy to beat - he had loads more fish, but they were much smaller and he came second with 29Lbs - Barry (or should I call him Lindsay?) was 3rd with 24lbs+. Full results are here.
I'm not sure why Barry ------>
has been given his weekend name - I'm sure someone will enlighten me.....
It's now 10 weeks since I got my pole, and I've managed 5 wins, 2 seconds and a third as well as my fist blank :-) I'm still learning, with today's lesson being that time spent searching out lake bed 'features' (like the dip I found) is essential to finding the fish.
And just for fun, I then went to Scotkart in Cambuslang for 40 minutes of practice on their new surface, which has much less grip, with 7 other guys from the place i'm contracting at the moment. All in all, a fun day!
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