So difficult in the high wind

 Peg 24, Yew, Decoy, Sunday, July 24
I awoke in the morning to be met by a howling wind - a bit different to the baking-hot, clammy weather which has ruined my tomatoes. The wind persisted all day, blowing down the lake towards corner peg 16, where Shaun Buddle sat. Shaun is so consistent that I immediately made him favourite to win, even though Pete The Meat was also fishing. Peter Spriggs is on a golden run at the moment, not only winning matches, but managing to draw Golden Pegs as well, which he did for this match. He was on 29 today - not a peg I would have chosen.

I drew 24, not as far down as I would have liked, but some of the carp on Yew are now so big that a couple in the last 15 minutes can propel anyone from being an also-ran to an immediate frame. My swim was like all the others - windy, with it coming in from the front left, and so fierce that fishing beyond three pole sections was almost impossible for much of he time.

The wind was strong to start with...and blew stronger as the match went on!

Kevin gets an early fish
I started on a feeder, with a washter and then a pop-up, as did Dick on my left, but when I saw Kevin Lee, two anglers to my left on 26, playing a fish on a pole, which I knew he had hooked in the margin, I swapped to a  pole. Dick did the same and soon had a fish himself, close in, while I had just one bite in the deep margin on cat meat, which I missed (probably a liner).

Eventually I had to try farther out at three sections, and used a 2gm Tipo float, with corn, and about an hour later Success! A 2 lb F1 came in. It was difficult to decide where the loose feed was finishing up - I had expected some sort of undertow in that wind, but the float stayed still, not even blown along by the wind. This fish took several yards downwind, to my right, but  nothing else came from that area.

A change works after a fashion
Halfway through the match and I had that one fish, while I think Dick had had a couple more. In desperation I changed down to a 0.75 Drennan Tuff Eye and to my surprise this was almost as stable as the 2gm float, and I though I now detected tiny movements which could have been fish.

There were barbel in Callum's catch, but they 
turned out to be camera-shy!

As an experiment I put out a good pot of pellets, hemp and corn, and immediately thought I saw more little float movements. That happened several time, so I had to assume that fish were, at least, coming to the feed. Eventually another F1, about 4 lb, took the float under, and that was the start of a goodish spell when I had another F1, and a 3 lb ide, followed by a 4 lb carp and two bigger ones around 10 lb, in about 90 minutes. Dick had some at the same time. All my fish came when I either dragged the bait against the wind or lifted the pole and let the wind blow the line to drag the bait to the right. 

Yes, Shaun was bagging!
With about two hours to go Shaun came walking past to his van past for another net, but I knew he had started with three, so he was clearly bagging - no surprise as, although Peg 16 has fished poorly in our matches recently, it has always been when there's a Northerly wind, leaving that end of the lake calm, and today it was a South-Westerly.

An hour left, and I had seen our guest Dave Hobbs on my right get a fish on feeder and another on the pole, while Callum, down on peg 19, had had several on pole. Later I found out that they were mainly barbel. In fact next door, Allax Golightly had forgotten to bring his cat meart, so Callum gave him a tin and Allan caught enough barbel on it to come fourth!

Dave Garner somehow fished cat meat on
a waggler in that wind for 55 lb 11 oz.

I lose a big 'un
 I had already tried the shallowest water I could find, near the platform, without rre4sult, and was pondering changing back to a feeder when I suddenly had another carp, my last, which went into my second net and which later weighed 9 lb 4 oz. Then I hit another big fish which I played for several minutes before the hook pulled out. I'm guessing it was hooked on the outside of the mouth, as it didn't act as if it was foulhooked, and I just couldn't control it properly - it lumped around the swim at will.

I had been confident that the fish would come on in that last hour, but they appeared to have vanished. Just like that!!

The weigh in
Pete The Meat was top down to me with 72 lb 15 oz, while Kevin Lee, who has won our club championship more times than anyone else, never had another fish after that first one. He said he had just three bites all day and that solitary carp weighed 3 lb 15 oz. His excuse was that after throwing the match away a week previously by going over our 50 lb limit in three nets he wanted to make sure he wasn't over today!

One of Dave's biggest fish which we weighed at over 13 lb.

I weighed 50 lb 4 oz, which was second down to Allan Golightly on 20, who had 56 lb 13 oz; and the next three also beat me, ending with Shaun in 16 who totalled a magnificent 186 lb 11 oz taken on cat meat. In one net he had just one fish, and that weighed 19 lb 4 oz! So I ended sixth, which I didn't think was bad, as four of the top five weights came from those last four pegs, and had I landed that last fish I  would certainly have framed. Peter Spriggs, in my opinion, did incredibly well to take third spot from his peg at the 'wrong' end of the lake.

So although there was a very big weight, overall, the fishing was very difficult, with every fish a minor triumph for the rest of us, probably because of the huge differences in temperatures and wind direction. Hopefully things will settle down a little now.

Here's Shaun's whopper - all 19 lb 4 oz of it, which will probably win our club's annual cup for the biggest fish.

My next match is Wednesday in the Veteran's National on Makins Fishery, between Coventry and Leicester. The lakes are (for those familiar with the fishery) Lake 5 on Phase 1; Lagoon, Lizard, Crater, Snake and Reptile on Phase 2; and Derwent, Severn and Thames on Phase 3. Lake 5 is the largest lake. I practiced on this for a previous National there, and caught fish on a slow-sinking bomb, while the other lakes are almost all pole-orientated.