An OK weight from a peg I didn't fancy - Match Lake, Northview.

Peg 15

A few weeks ago secretary John Smith and myself paid a trip to Northview, at Gedney, to check out the newest addition to the match lake – a strip of water previously separate from the lake, but now part of it. We had a lot of fish from the shallow margins, so John put this area in the draw. Sixteen fished, including two guests. John drew 14 – the first peg in the new area, and the same peg  he had pleasure-fished. I would have liked the roadside – pegs 7 to 11, but  I drew 15, about 40 yards farther along the bank from John; and Mel  Lutkin drew the last peg 16, on the far bank of the new area.

You can't tell from this picture, but the water was heavy with green algae.

The water all round the lake was heavy with green algae – I’ve never seen as much; it looked syrupy., and when I scooped out a maggot tin of water to put my casters in it was still green, and never cleared. We'd had two or three days of this cool wind, and the previous day on Decoy the fishing has been harder than during the summer.

I had a quick walk round the lake before we started, and was told that fish were moving in the main part, but I never saw any in my swim before the start. However, the wind was into my bank, but it was cool and it had blown in scum, which was worse in John’s swim than mine. To be honest neither John nor I felt that the fish would be feeding when we started. We were right!

Three hours without a bite

I put in dead maggots and hemp at six sections, in about four feet of water, and then had a quick look in the margins about a metre from the bank where the depth was about two feet. Nothing. Out to the long swim and again I never had a smell. So into a top-two swim where the shelf dropped quickly to four feet. But after nearly three hours I had not had a single bite, although some fish were now swimming just under the surface and I could clearly see swirls. I had already tried shallow fishing with caster for these fish well out, but never got even a liner in 45 minutes. Strange.

Kevin gets the weighing underway.

Kevin with part of his winning 185 lb 6 oz catch.

John Garner, third on 125 lb 2 oz.

So I decided to put in a fair amount of bait – pellet, caster and hemp with some corn, in that top-two swim. That brought me a fish – a 2 lb bream on cat meat which leapt out of the water when hooked. Then a smaller one. Then two foulhooked carp lost, and finally eventually a near-5 lb carp ended in the net. Cat meat then brought me a bite from a fish perhaps every ten minutes, but I lost half of them. Some were definitely foulhooked, but not all. One carp took a worm meant for the bream.

Meanwhile John on my left had had two or three carp, also from the deep margin, but it was taking him a long time to land them. And Mel to my right was struggling. So I thought  I wasn’t doing too badly.

Guest Barry Plumb shows the sort of quality
fish found in the match lake. he totalled
57 lb 8 oz from a peg on the roadside.

Problems netting the fish

The opaque water meant that you couldn’t see the fish until they were literally laying on the surface, and I lost several at the net because they were taking so long to land. Nothing at all came from the margins, even though fish were now swirling there a lot of the time.

Dennis Sambridge with 99 lb 6 oz from peg 7, 
nearest the lodges, on the roadside bank. 
All the fish fought like veritable tigers!

The result - the cool wind didn't help the weights.

Corn as a change bait just didn’t work, so I stayed on cat meat and ended with about 12 or 13 carp plus a roach and four bream – all in cracking condition from 3 lb to about 7 lb-plus. I ended by weighing 75 lb 2 oz, which was top in that end of the lake. But it couldn’t compete with pegs 3, 4 and 5, opposite the road, which produced the top three weights, best 185 lb 6 oz to Kevin Lee on cat meat. 

I ended sixth, which I was satisfied with from that swim on the day, and with luck, if more fish had stuck, I could have ended in the top four. John to my left had 44 lb 2 oz and Mel just 19 lb 7 oz, though he also lost some. So far as I could make out, hardly a fish was taken from the shallow margins next to the bank - almost all came from the deeper water.