The fish on Beastie are beastly to me

Peg 21, Wed, June 18
Frankly there's not a lot to report from my office in this 15-entry Spratts match. The sun shone hotly, with some cloud in the morning, and I don't think any of us really expected to catch a lot, especially since, as on so many local waters, the fish still seem out of sorts, not yet having spawned properly. Those North-Easterlies which keep breaking up the warm spells, and the lack of any meaningful rain for many weeks, are undoubtedly to blame.

The left margin was not good -
it was snaggy and then it was too
deep next to the bush.

I put up a pellet waggler and a feeder rod...and never used either! With lots of fish showing just under the surface I couldn't resist 20 minutes fishing shallow, and never saw any of those fish take the slightest interest in my banded pellet. So it was on to the pole, at 11.5 metres. I left that line after 15 biteless minutes and came into the deep water in front of the platform, a little to my left.

Bream!
That deepish swim brought a bream on dead reds and then a 1 lb F1, and then I had a good half-hour with four or five more 2 lb bream in the net. A look out to the long swim saw some bites on a 6mm expander, and a change to a 4mm brought one tiny bream. For the next two hours I alternated between those swims, with another 2 lb bream from the margin, and three more tiny bream on the long swim (they didn't weigh even 1 lb between them).

The right margin had sort of collapsed!

By now Neil Paas on my left was catching carp or F1s on mussel, and I spent a long time in the margins for just one more 2 lb bream. Unfortunately I had no nice margins - the right was like a shallow cow drink, with no flat areas, and in any case I never saw any carp activity there, though I kept looking. The left margin was horribly snaggy, so I concentrated under the bush, but there was almost four feet of water there, and I never saw signs of any carp, on cat meat, pellet, corn or mussel.

Neil was partly hidden in the jungle, but  found some carp and F1s on mussel.

Both Neil Paas on my left and Martin Parker on my right had a good 30-minutes spell when I counted each one landing four carp or F1s, and I think Neil had at least one fishing a very shallow margin he had somewhere to his right. I had just that one F1, about eight good bream, the four tiny ones, a perch and a couple of roach on corn. I was glad when I'd had enough and the match ended.

Roy Whitwell - second with 63 lb 5 oz.

The weigh in
The steps down to 21 had to be negotiated slowly (and carefully) and I had hardly packed away when the scales came to me. Neil had just weighed in with his 62 lb 5 oz, which was leading, and I was well down with my measly 20 lb 1 oz. 

On 26 Roy Whitwell then took the lead with 63 lb 5 oz - some on a feeder and the rest in the righthand margin just up to the reed bed which starts there. But round on peg 5 Peter Harrison won - the latest in a very good run of match wins on Decoy - with 76 lb 13 oz.

Marks out of 10
Difficult to say - weights were all over the place. I might have had more bream on worm, but I'd deliberately not taken any from my wormery because so often they die in the heat. I got the feeling that there were lots more bream in that deepish swim at the start, but later I couldn't get the slightest liner, so I assumed they had gone. I give myself a nominal 6/10. Next match is on Saturday on Six-Islands, but the forecast is for more heat, so I must just hope we get a bit of a wind. If the carp have spawned by then, sport could be better than of late.

THE RESULT

3 Mike Rawson             DNW

4 John Garner                44 lb 8 oz            4th

5 Peter Harrison            76 lb 13 oz          1st

7 Bob Barrett                DNW

14 Trevor Cousins        DNW (put back 26 lb)

15 Bob Walker             DNW

17 Peter Spriggs            43 lb 5 oz          5th

18 Joe Bedford            DNW

20 Neil Paas                62 lb 5 oz             3rd

21 Mac Campbell        20 lb 1 oz

23 Martin Parker         28lb 1 oz

24 Dick Warrener        DNW (one bite, one fish)

26 Roy Whitwell        63 lb 5 oz            2nd

29 Mick Ramm          15 lb 5 oz

30 Dave Hobbs          18 lb 1 oz