Horseshoe not lucky for me at Decoy

Horseshoe Lake, Decoy, peg 18

A cooler day than we have had recently, with lots of cloud. There are several large lily beds in Horseshoe, and peg 18 has mainly open water, with lillies about eight or nine metres to the left.

Thirteen of us were in this Spratts club match, and when we got to our pegs Bob, on 19, didn’t fancy his swim, which has lillies all round, and jokingly offered to swap with me.  I actually said I would have been happy to, as I suspected that there would be more fish under the lily leaves. But I had a cunning plan (see the last entry) and started as I had planned – Method while pinging.

My swim - flat calm, but looking quite nice.

The plan works!

Everything went according to plan...for five minutes. I had a wrap-round on The Method with an 8mm pellet cast to the far-bank reeds, after five minutes but the 4 lb mirror came off at the net. Next cast gave another fish, which determinedly made a dash for the lillies and I had to grit my teeth and hold, but the hook length broke. The next two or three casts brought nothing so after half-an-hour I changed to a shallow rig at ten metres, where I had been pinging 4mm pellets.

After about 15 minutes I had a 2 lb F1, but although I could see carp under the surface bites came very infrequently, including a couple of roach. A change to a 6mm pellet brought two more F1s, and for the next two hours I persevered, eventually catching another four or five fish three feet deep, and having a couple pull off.  The bites all took my pole down – no messing about, and I don’t know why I didn’t keep catching.  I then tried fishing full depth with another rig, at about five feet, with expanders, but didn’t get even a liner. Very strange.

Big fish lost in the lillies

At one time I put in a single catapult of pellets over to the lillies, dropped in with the rig about a foot away., and immediately hit a very big fish which, after a few seconds, went into the lillies. I could feel it still swimming, and held as hard as I could, but the hook pulled out. So it hadn’t actually snagged me; but I didn’t fancy doing that again, so reluctantly gave up on that swim.

Martin fished shallow all day for third.

Eventually I had to try the margins, and first drop-in with meat over pellets and corn to the right brought a 1 lb tench. Buit roach were a real nuisance, but  what was worse was that it was impossible to distinguish the roach bites from F1 and carp bites – they were both taking the float down very slowly and hesitatingly. Annoyingly I hit about six big fish which all came off after a few seconds, and I don’t think they were foulhooked. They just didn’t seem to take the bait properly.

An hour from the end, in desperation, I put dead maggots in, but couldn’t get a bite on a bunch. However suddenly the meat produced a couple of fish before the roach and small bream came in. That kept happening – two carp then the tiddlers. Back out to the longer swim brought nothing – I didn’t get a fish there. One of the last fish was a 4lb barbel on cat meat fished a few inches off bottom!

Some managed to catch well!

Beside me, Bob Barrett was really struggling, with a couple of carp on feeder early on, and I could see he couldn’t get much in the margins. However I knew that Trevor, on his right, was catching well shallow, fishing at about eight metres to a lilly bed in front of him. He told me later he  had to fish close to the lillies to get bites, and inevitably lost some.  To his right John Smith, on 13 on the corner, managed to take some carp on meat in the margins. He told me all his fish came within five seconds of the bait going in...if he left it for longer the roach nipped in and pulled it to pieces.

John's single net, knocked back to 50 lb.

Round to his right Martin Parker fished shallow all day and ended third with 99 lb 4 oz...just 3 oz ahead of Peter Harrison.

Tevor won with 143 lb 12 oz, and John was third with  104 lb 76 oz, while my measly, and hard-won 63 lb 8 oz was beaten into sixth place by 90-year-old Ted Lloyd by exactly  1 lb.

What I did wrong

Actually I think it should be what I didn’t do. I should have a) tried paste to see if the roach left it alone long enough for the carp to zoom in; b) tried the Method in the margin swim with 8mm pellet; c) tried double sweetcorn in the margins, though a single grain invariably brought a roach or tiny bream. Otherwise I have to put it down to being just ‘one of those days when I didn’t really get started.’

Ted (90) beat me by 1 lb.

Not sure of my matches before the Vets National on July 25^th. I don’t particularly like  Woodland View as the lakes are all so different, and peggy. But someone has to draw a good swim, so it might be me. Last time I was in the worst section of the worst lake (High) so perhaps I’m biased!

The result, and a good result for Mick on
Peg 1 after a day's coaching with Polly.