It looks like the last of winter *may* be over - but don't' say it too loudly :-)
Wednesday was a beautiful day to be outside, with the temp hitting around 13 degrees and a gentle breeze, ( at least where I was fishing!) and the sun on my back.
I'd got to Magiscroft just in time for the 9:30 draw, to find the expected 6 competitors had grown to 11 with some good opposition. I drew P20 on the island, which I was quite happy with and headed off to setup.
I hadn't prepared any bait for today's match, so just decided to use the pellets that I had left over from Sunday's event.
Normally go for a far shelf rig and another for the bottom of the shelf, but thought I'd see if I could fish at various points down the slope.
I spent Monday night fitting grey hydolastic to one of my top kits, so I set this one up for fishing about a foot down the slope with the white hydro setup for fishing tight to the reeds on the far bank. I first used 'hydro' as it's known, last weekend when I used the white variety. The colour relates to the strength with white being in 6-10 and grey in the 10-14 range. Balance is important so I was using a 0.08mm hooklink with the white and 0.12mm with the grey. I have to say it was very good - nice and soft for the first couple of meters and getting progressively stiffer as more is taken.
Fishing with one of John Perrela's diamond floats tight to the the far bank reeds, I caught a nice 2lb F1 on my first put which was quickly followed by a mix of stockies, mirrors and smaller F1's for the fist hour - around 12 fish. As ever the bites dried up, so I then moved 3 feet off the bank with my 'on the slope' rig and picked up another 3 decent sized fish - bites were not prolific, but the fish were around. Then the small roach moved in and I got loads of ultra fast bites that I couldn't connect with.
So I fished for roach on the short line about 3M out for the next 2 hours with the occasional foray with ether the far bank or slope rigs, this time with an 8mm pellet to discourage any roach from having a go - but nothing doing.
When the roach stop bitting it can mean that larger fish have moved in, so just after 15:00, it was back to the slope rig and I was glad I had a strong setup - I hooked into a fish that shot to the right taking most of the grey hydro and pulling like a train - even with the stronger tackle, it took a good ten minutes to subdue and net a lovely F1 of over 4lbs.
In the next 40 mins, I managed another 3/4 carp and I was quite happy that I had done as well as I could when the all out was called at 16:00.
My slope rig used one of Davy Smith's .1g floats, so as we waited for the scales to come round, I walked up to Davy's setup on P24 to see how he'd faired - "I've had a ?*&($ of a day - lost 14 fish" says Davy when I enquired. "No idea what weight I've got" - Then we spotted the scales coming round, so back to my keepnet where I weighed in with 33lbs - 4oz, which put me in the lead. Not for long - Mr Smith, who had "a ?*&($ of a day" had 53lb - 8oz -let's hope he doesn't ever have a good day:-)
Full results can be found here.
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