Next to last, but not downhearted

Horseshoe, Decoy, peg 11

Not a lot to report on this fairly calm day, the catches being down because the water is so cold. I put a block of frozen maggots in lake water to thaw and they were still frozen 45 minutes later! Thjis was the Sunday Open, and 11 of us fished. Being realistic, I would be happy no being last in this sort of company.

As Tony Evans had told me, this peg is not as deep as peg 7, where I fished in the Winter League, but I'm not certain that accounted for my lack of fish. Forty minutes on a feeder with maggot brought two tiny liners, so it was down the side, in a hole under the tree to my left, where I eventually found a roach or two on maggot.

I lose a big fish
But they were never going to win anything, so I went out to five sections, where once again it was roach on maggot until, halfway through the match, I hit a big fish. I had just changed my hook down from a 14 to a PR22 size 16 - a very fine-wire hook. Two minutes after hooking the fish, which almost pulled my light elastic into peg 13, the hook pulled off. I though about it and realised the line, about 0.16mm, was probably too thick for the tiny spade.

So it was back to a 'normal' strong size 16 and eventually, after a long spell with just odd roach I came into the side and started catching them fairly quickly on a single maggot, hoping carp would arrive; but they didn't. Meanwhile Tony Evan, two swims to my right, had also been concentrating on roach on maggot, but the odd F1 had muscled in, so he was way ahead of me. Then, with 75 minutes left, I tried out at 13 metres, got two bites which I missed (probably roach), then I hit a good fish which came off,  and then caught my first F1 around 2 lb, on two live red maggots..

After 15 minutes fishless I came back to five sections and got another F1. Then back out for a bream, back in for a 2 lb tench, then back out for two bream over 1 lb each. In the last 15 minutes Tony managed, after a long fight, to net a carp approaching 10 lb, and two more net fish, which boosted his total no end!

The result.

Simon Godfrey,  third on peg 5,
 fished maggot.

My two F1s, one tench , three bream and two or three pounds of roach weighed 13 lb 9 oz, which was not last! So success of a kind. Jimmy Brooks won on 19 feeding corn in a toss pot at 13 metres. He told me he fed just two or three grains at a time and fished with corn all day. And he put back a 6 lb pike, which I think should probably have been counted as we are not fishing to Angling Trust rules, but fishery rules. And I doubt whether pike are mentioned.