Tuesday 26 June 2018

Hot and bovered - Elm, Decoy


Elm Lake, Decoy, peg 13
(Sunday, June 24, 2018)


A very hot day, with no wind and carp cruising around aimlessly just below the surface. Peg 13 is in the far corner of this strip, and although I would have prefered pegs 9 and 16, or next to them, I was not unhappy. However, I have never done any good from the North-eastern corner of any of  the four strip lakes, and this day was no exception! I hasten to add that there’s nothing wrong with the corner pegs, and many matches have been won from them, but I just cannot seem to get to grips with them.
 
Baking hot and flat calm in this corner swim. 
I started by putting pellets out at six sections, and within a minute fish had started to move below the surface, so I changed to a shallow rig. But almost half-an-hour later I hd not had a touch and the fish seemed to have disappeared. A quick look at full depth brought nothing, so it was round  to my right, in front of the pipes which protrude, onto a shelf about four feet deep, which I fed with dead maggot, hoping for barbel. This looked a really fishy spot.

Immediately I foulhooked something which came off, then  next drop-in a 3 lb barbel came. Twenty minutes later an F1 also took the maggots and I fed a swim to my left, in the deeper water, with pellets and corn and a little cat meat, because John, to my left, had had three good carp to his right. My only catch there were two 1 lb bream, and after 90 minutes, when member John Garner walked round, I had 7 lb while I estimated John had around 25 lb.

Already I need a miracle to win
John has had a major operation, and has not yet resumed fishing, but likes to pay us visits. So I asked him how Kevin, opposite, had fared, as I had seen him start to catch good fish after a slow start. He had an estimated 47 lb, so I knew I was not in the running to win, barring a miracle!


The rest of the match was frustrating, as John hooked fish after fish, losing some, but was obviously way ahead of me, as I found mainly barbel, which weighed half the weight of his carp and took twice as long to land. But I did still manage to add the odd carp from both swims, using cat meat or dead maggots. Corn failed to produce anything.  But I lost half-a-dozen fish, which was probably considerably less than most other anglers who pole fished, who nearly all admitted to losing more.

Barbel hooked (and lost) on paste
Towards the end I put on paste in an effort  to catch a carp...and what I am sure was a barbel immediately took it. It must have been a really big one because in three seconds it had dived under the bank beside me, which is heavily undercut, and pulled off. My tight purple Hydro was no match for that one, despite the fact that I had managed to hold all the others.  Opposite, Kevin had continued to add big carp and barbel steadily all afternoon.
 
The result. Pegs
1-12 are on the West bank.
The weigh-in
This was a pairs match and my partner Mel, on the oppposite bank, weighed 68 lb 1 oz – a weight  I thought  could not match. But the three who I thought would get good catches on that bank all put over 100 lb on the scales, so I knew our team of two was out of it. Surprisingly my fish weighed 69 lb 10 oz, so those 2 lb barbel must have weighed 3 lb.  John, who I was sure had well over 100 lb, totalled 85 lb 5 oz, and told me his biggest fish came late to his left, towards the next platform which was vacant. I finished  fifth out of the 8 on my bank and eighth overall. Kevin won with 139 lb 6 oz, and his pairing (with Tony Nisbet) won the team event.

A disappointing result for me, but I am still not sure what I did wrong. John’s carp were coming to cat meat from only a few feet from where I was fishing. However, even bland-looking commercials have underwater features that we cannot see, and if we could we still might not understand why fish prefer some areas to others. I am sure I did some things wrong, but I can’t fathom out what.

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