Tunnel Barn Open Wens 7/4/10

Hi folks, it's back to tunnel barn farm for the wensday open as i have a few days booked off on the end of the bank holiday. Today's open is going to be on extension pool with17 fishing it should be a good match. In went the hand into the draw bag and out popped peg 17, stav drew peg 21 so at least we were close for parking purpose's. As we starting setting up we soon found out that we would be up against it today as pete rice ( local hero ) had drawn in-between us on peg 19? Peg 17 has an island to fish to at 11m but with no features i deiced to fish at 13m to my left where there was a small tree and some reeds that looked a bit more fishy??? I also set up a 4m line , margin rig to my left in a gap in the reeds and a shallow rig. I won't bore you with my rig set up as if you have read my blog before you will know the types of floats, line & hooks i am using at the moment.
Bait for the day was 2 bags of 4mm tbf feed pellets, 1 1/2 pints of red maggots and a few 4mm expanders for the hook plus an emergency tin of corn.
On the whistle i put in 1/4 of a pot of pellets in on my 13m island swim, half a pot of pellets down to the empty pallet peg 16, on my closer margin line and 4m line i decided just to throw 4-6 pellets every few mins so that i had 2 line with next to no feed and 2 with a bit more bait potted in, i could then see how the fish react to the different feeding patterns? ( clever i thought ). First put-in on my 4m line i had a 2lb f1 BINGO next put-in another 1lb f1 and for the first 30 mins i had regular bites, pete was also catching i thought we were on for a good day. After the first half hour bites started to tail off a bit so over to the island i went and had 3 fish in 3 put-ins while still feeding both 4m & edge swims SOLID i thought. I stared to miss bites on the island and soon found out why as some of the new stockie's put in an appearance, these fish are between 10z and 6oz. So i re-fed the island swim and went back to my 4m line and had a few fish until the first hour was up and then bites dried up altogether on this line so with an hour gone i had got around 10 f1's and few stockie's. Pete had been catching steady on the next peg although he seemed to be catching smaller fish, i had look down my close edge line and got 2 fish straight away then nothing. A look down the next pallet produced nothing so i started to rotate all my lines feeding sparingly as i looked like the fish were still not in full feeding mode, although in felt warmer than sunday after some early rain had gone and the sun was now out. After around 3 hours i was struggling realy bad and couldn't buy a bite on any of my lines so i plumbed a line up on the island at 11m and put a few maggots. First put- in i had a carp next put-in a gonk then back to nothing, i was now left scratching my head as to what was going on? pete had caught steady all match with steady stream of fish but couldn't see anybody else as the island was in the way and pete's peg is on a bit of a point blocking my view down the lake. I had odd bites here and there with an hour to go i started getting more regular bites down my short left hand margin. I was now catching well again but losing some fish, i know that a couple were foul hooked but i felt something was not right. Another couple of lost fish and now the air was blue as i was losing to many, all winter i have been using double no5 elastic without ant real problems but as it was now getting warmer i had put double no6 in 2 of my tops. I felt that the elastic was set soft as it only just went back into the pole but when a fish pulled it out around 2-3ft it was powering up to quick and pulling the 18 hook out. A quick swap of the rig to a soft 11 preston hollo and a change up in hook size to a 16 tosciro was in order, i was now getting all my fish out and with 15 mins left i hooked a better fish it took a few mins to get under control, a good looking 6lb white ghostie was the culprit. All to soon the whistle went and i was complaining that my fish had turned up to late down the edge and had suffered a right stiff neck form watching pete catch all day. Stav had come over saying that as well as getting a slapping off pete too he had struggled all day and the guy the other side of him had caught steady on maggot all day shallow at 6m? double slapping with both cheeks red?
When the scales got to us there were 2 good weights of 77&74lb the guy next to stav had 63lb and stav 33lb. Pete was next and we all knew that he had got enough to take the lead he weighed a great 99lb 13oz and i had 51lb 9oz. Talking to pete after the match ( and a spy on his bait table ) reveled that he thought it was still to cool to be feeding 4mm pellets by hand and had fed micros at 6&8m through a kinder pot. I thought that all his thinking of keeping the feed tight and fishing slightly longer than in full summer mode was all very credible, and also he thought that it was to early for feeding large amounts of maggots shallow ( all those hours of fishing 3-4 times a week over 8 years of working there must account for something?????).
On my own match i don't know weather i feed to much, fished to close or what but certainly picked up a few tips off pete, one thing i did find out was that double no6 was to strong for the average size of the fish ( out it come's only used it twice ) i love preston 11 & 13 hollo as it is nice and soft and as i use preston pulla kits just yank out a couple of feet if you hook a better fish. Not that i am complaing as it's a great venue where i have only caught for 2 hours out of the 5 and had 50lb for nothing so you can get some sort of idea of the big weight's that come from the venue when you get it right for 5 hours 100-200lb weights are common.
Roll on sunday as we are coming back for some more armed with some micro's this time ??????