At least I caught fish on Cedar

 Peg 10, Cedar, Sun, Nov 30

Back wind and bright sun for most of the match.

Back to Cedar on Decoy for this JVmatch and the fishing was still difficult. But my peg 10 was close to where the action had been on Tuesday, and I had Ian Frith to my left, so I hoped I could watch and learn. There was a fair amount of sun, and in fact I didn't learn much early on - no bites on a bomb or feeder for hours. Then Pat (I don't know his other name), on my right, had a carp on a tiny piece of punch bread cast to the middle of the lake. 

Pat, on peg 9, lands his only fish.

I'd been casting mainly to the far side with various feeders and baits, so tried shorter, still with no response.Meanwhile Ian Frith had a smallish fish on his pole, then a couple on the Method feeder cast right across. Then he came back on the pole and caught a couple of big carp. I had changed, by now, to the pole with maggot and eventually, not knowing what else to do, put on a lighter rig, still fished at 13 metres, with a single red maggot on a size 18 Kaizan hook, which is very light,. First drop, and I had a bite and landed a carp about 2 lb. Success!

Ian Frith carefully plays a carp on his pole.

That was followed by a three-pounder, and then I lost a fish halfway in, so changed to a lighter Preston 13 green elastic. That resulted in one more bite - from a carp almost 5 lb. But there was no pattern to the bites, except that they came just after the bait had hit bottom. I finished with three.

Ian on white Hydro
Ian meanwhile, using white Hydro elastic which he uses all Winter, had five or six more, bigger than mine, plus an ide, and he had some more after my last fish.

...in she comes!

He told me later that while some bites had come 'out of the blue' when the bait had been stationary for some time, others had come as the bait hit bottom, or even on the drop. I guessed he had at least 50 lb.

To Ian's left, in corner peg 13, John Knights had hd a fish or two early on, and at the end said he had around 40 lb. I guessed my three fish went about 10 lb, but I hadn't seen Pat catch any more. On his right Chris Saunders didn't weigh in.

The weigh in

Ian had some good carp in his winning catch.

There were good double-figure weights in the first few pegs, while the middle swims were poor, just as they had been on the previous Tuesday. Pat's 5 lb 3 oz next to me consisted of that single fish he'd caught mid-match. My three went 10 lb 15 oz, while Ian won the lake with 55 lb 12 oz, just beating Eddie McIlroy on peg 5, by 8 oz. John in the corner had 41 lb 1 oz. 

Roy Whincup won Elm lake on peg 1, which was a surprise to me because I (and others) have in the past rated that swim as one of the worst on the complex. But I remember that on the drains it was often the swims rated as terrible in the Summer which produced in Winter Leagues. What do we know? It says something for the fishery when you get results like that - confirmation that on Decoy, one of the fairest match fisheries in the country, any peg can win.

My next match is with JV on Sunday, probably on Six-Island, but Roy Whincup is away so we are left in the capable hands on Ernie Lowbridge, who will  make the decision as to where we fish. Very happy with that - I'll happily fish anywhere on Decoy.

THE RESULT