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Magpie Lake, Pidley, peg 38

Peg 38 on Magpie has been the most consistent peg all Winter, and it’s still a cracker in Summer – always has been. So I was mighty pleased to draw it in this Over 60s match, which had 18 entries...until I walked over the bridge and saw fish clearly spawning in the marginal reeds and chasing each other through the lillies which grow about 8 metres from the bank. Not a good sight!

Still, I started in the margins, to check, after putting in some corn and pellets in the deeper water three sections out, but as I half expected I didn’t get a bite for 20 minutes. So inhto the deep water I went – with one small carp in the next 30 minutes. Fish were moving about all over the surface, so I simply had to try a shallow rig near the lillies – and I had been throwing out pellets every 30 seconds or so, in case. First drop in with a banded pellet the pole tip was pulled down and in came a 2 lb common.

That set me up for the next two hours, and I beavered away fishing shallow on pellet and, later, maggot for just six carp, with two weeding me because I had to fish so close to the lillies. So after two hours I had eight fish and Kevin Peacock and Roy Whincup, opposite me, had also had odd fish, mainly from their deep-water swims, but I saw Kevin nick an occasional one from the margin. I had been dropping into the margins every 20 minutes but still never had a bite, and the fish were still splashing around there. So I peservered shallow,and despite tightening my elastic as hard as I could, and changing it three times for stronger stuff, I lost another couple of fish when I held them hard to prevent them getting into the lillies.

These fish really did fight – as fish which are ready to spawn often do. Even the two-pounders kept diving round the landing net and setting off for the far bank when I was sure they must be tired out. Then I anded a couple more, and finally lost nmy complete rig when a big fish took my tight black Hydro right into the lillies.

That was the moment I decided to give up on shallow and concentrate on the margins for the last two hours. I had about 30 lb in my nhet, but Kevin and Roy were certainly doing better in their margin swims now. Amazingly first drop in saw a 3 lb mirror come in and from then on I took fish steadily from both side, nearly all on small pieces of luncheon meat. Cat meat brought just one fish! They definitely wanted a small bait.

At the end I wandered round to see Kevin weigh in, and already there was a 233 lb on the board from Chris Saunders, which I know was his third weight over 200 lb on local waters this year! He fished cat meat down the margin from peg 8 and had fish right from the start, but he told me there was no fish spawning around him. There were two other 100 lb-plus weights. Kevin weighed 133 lb for fourth, and Roy 131 lb for fifth. There was 145 lb from the consistent peg 35 from Will Hadley, and I was surprised to weigh 97 lb for seventh.

So if I had persevered in the margin after the first three hours I might have been able to frame, as I averaged around 30 lb an hour for the last two hours. Easy to be wise after the event, but it turned out the match was really all in my own hands. Incidentally Will told me afterwards he has a top kit set up with black Hydro through just one section especially for dealing with conditions like I had just had.