19.02.15

Makins the most of my holiday - Mark Griffiths

After being really busy with work I had some holiday days that needed using up before the end of March, so thought I'd treat myself to a mid-week open match at Makins on lake 4.

It had been a while since I'd been able to get out mid-week for a match so I was looking forward to it. Arriving at the venue, I dropped into the café for a cuppa and to pay my pools money.

As you would expect midweek there wasn't a great turn out and only eight anglers turned up to have a dabble. Lake 4 had been quite hard, so I had heard in the café, and everyone seemed to want to draw pegs between 6 and 10.

At the draw I pulled out peg 25, which was on the opposite side of the lake, so not so fancied. However, there was plenty of room my side with only two anglers on my bank, so my optimism was a bit higher than I first thought.

Arriving at my peg I decided to set up one bomb rod and use several different hook lengths to cover different areas and different baits. All my hook lengths were 2ft in length and all tied with 0.19mm Guru N-Gauge.

I set up one hooklength to fish double blown 8mm pellet with a size 12 QM1, I could also use this hook length for popping my bread up 2ft.

I also had a hooklength for popping a boilie up 2ft with a size 14 QM1.My final hooklength was for popping bread at different levels using four mumber 10 shot to pin the bait.

After an hour of chucking around my peg I had managed just a couple of line bites for my efforts. I had been pinging 8mm pellets towards an island drop off and decided it was time to have a look over it on double blown 8mm pellets.

After a few biteless casts the tip eventually went round and I netted my first carp, half hour later I found another doing the same thing then back to no signs for the next hour.

After trying the boilie and bread tactics again and chucking around my peg, I still found no joy. I tried soaking my bread in Goo on one cast as this had worked for me before on hard days, but that never came up trumps either

After racking my brains, I decided to sit it out where I had had my bites earlier and with half an hour left I netted carp number three and the biggest of the day. I then went on to latch into one with 10 minutes remaining only to lose I to a snag - that was really disappointing as there's a good chance it cost me 2nd in the match.

As the scales arrived I weighed just shy of 20lb with 42lb winning and 26lb second.

However, it was a nice treat to get out midweek and I enjoyed the day. I think I may try and get out next Wednesday too and try and make a habit of it.

News ArchiveNEWS ARCHIVE

ARCHIVE