I never got properly started – Magpie Lake, Pidley

The Over 60s match on Magpie Lake attracted 22 anglers, and I fancied a swim with some sort of feature apart from the margins – 1 to 5 where there are lillies or reeds in the open water; possibly round to 10 where there’s a reed island at about 20 metres; and then 25 to 36 most of which are on the island and several of which have lillies or reeds. In the event my sticky fingers pulled out 22, which I really did not fancy because it’s open water. And it was just about the only swim which never had a touch of sun all day thanks to the tall trees behind me.

That's the nearest the sun came to my swim. This was just before the start.

Not much happened – I started with a small Method feeder and maggot to the island, where I had a couple of liners in the first 30 minutes. A look on the pole at 13 metres saw two or three bites, all of which I missed. I had to assume they were liners as the maggots were not touched. After two hours it was really cold, in the South-Easterly breeze, which was blowing into me from the right, so I had a cup of hot Bovril and wandered up to the angler on my right. He had had just one carp, on the Method cast across.

The far-bank cut-out produced just a couple of liners. Some lucky
anglers were blessed with sun on the all day!

In the next two hours I managed to lose two carp on the pole, and then landed one after I had shallowed up to a foot off bottom. It was about 2 lb. I also had other bites, but am fairly sure they were liners. I tried hanging a piece of punch bread a couple of feet deep, with no result – you need to do this next to a feature for the best results. The margins produced nothing to maggot.

Three fish on feeder!

Then in the last hour, shivering with cold (despite having on seven layers of clothing plus my Goretex jacket), I reverted to feeder and took three carp from the open water on Method and maggot. They weighed 10 lb 2 oz and placed me tenth, with 11 anglers DNW-ing, though I suspect most had perhaps one or two fish.

The match was won by Will Hadley with 100 lb 12 oz on peg 34, fishing a 16-metre pole to the reed island and hanging a piece of bread two feet deep. He must have been very cold, as the wind would have been into his face from the right, though he would also have had some sun on his back.  Next three weights were from 9, 11 and 13, which would have had a backish wind.                                                  

So that result was probably as much as I could have expected from that swim, and at least I beat the anglers either side. No match this weekend, but I will probably go to the next Over-60s on Raven on Wednesday.