Commercial Matchman: Gudgeon Galore on Beastie

Peg 3, Beastie, Sunday, Feb 4
Twenty of us fished a JV match, all on Beastie, Decoy, and I wasn’t particularly pleased with peg 3, as that bank hasn’t fished as well as the ones opposite recently. I had Peter Harrison on my right on 4 – recently Shaun Buddle posted, on Facebook, that Peter could catch fish in a bowl of soapy water, and that’s not far from the truth! He started on a pole, and I started on bomb and bread, and I don’t think either of us had caught a fish after an hour.

Beastie 3, looking across to peg2 25 and 26. The wind soon became stronger.

Then I saw Ernie Lowbridge on 6 net a fish and went over to pole, 11.5 metres out. The wind was now fairly strong, and 11.5 metres was the longest I could easily fish a lot of the time. Shaun Coaten on 5 looked to be fishing about the same length, although at times I am sure he went out to 16 metres.

To cut a short story even shorter I couldn’t catch on corn, so tried dropping the rig closer to the reeds beside the promontory on my left, though I know it’s snaggy there. The float went under, and I hooked a big fish, which came off after two seconds – definitely foulhooked as the corn was still in place. So I tried dobbing bread there, about a foot off bottom, and had a bite, which I missed. Next drop in came a 2 oz carp!

Gudgeon, roach, gudgeon, perch...and gudgeon
Next were some roach – all on bread and eventually I had to try maggot, which brought lots of gudgeon, and some perch on worm, and roach. At one point I fished on a short top, close to my nets, and had more roach and lots more gudgeon, all on three maggots on a size 16. but they never came fast enough to give me a decent weight. Peter seemed to be struggling, as well. A switch to maggot feeder brought me one small roach and a couple more which came off halfway in. Then, half an hour from the end Peter hooked into a really big fish – well over 10 lb, that eventually finished in his landing net. Soon, using maggot at 11.5 metres, I had a 3 lb F1, and hoped that there would be more there, but no.

Peter Harrison hit this double-figure carp late on.
That's not a halo round his head - it's a lifebuoy.

I was on scales and later I found out that a lot of the carp taken were landed in that last 30 minutes. But not in my swim!

The weigh in
I was first to weigh in the first ten pegs – 7 lb 6 oz. Then the weights got better as we went along – Peter had 17 lb 14 oz including that big carp; then 36 lb 4 oz of carp and bream on corn; then 31 lb 6 oz of largely bream; then 63 lb 10 oz in peg 8, of big carp. From peg 15 they got even better – the fish seemed to like the rough water, Tom Wilson won the first two sections on 17 with 77 lb 11 oz, on bomb and bread, then four on pole in the last half hour. Overall winner was Dan Pettigrew with 154 lb 10 oz taken on a waggler shallow, casting to peg 1.

Shaun Coaten - 35 lb 4 oz.

Peter Harrison with his big mirror carp.

He hates them meeces to peeces

On 15 Steve Tilsley admitted he should have done rather better than his fourth-placed 63 lb 11 oz, but was broken by some carp – he blamed mice which liked the taste of his elastics while he was sitting in the sun last week, in Warmer Climes (that’s somewhere near Spain!) He spent the next couple of days checking everything in his pole holdall and his nets!

Yet again peg 22 produced a good weight.

I ended near the bottom. Probably worth 5 out of 10, as I don’t think anyone would have had a big weight on that peg on that day.