Spring Lea practice 27/4/10

Hi folks, this was our first visit to the fishery where we will be fishing round 2 of the V.D.E supercup in a couple of weeks. We have been drawn away again to a team from Oswestry called Morgans the other team in the tie is The Cock & Magpie from around Bewdley area. Spring Lea is a lovely looking fishery on the outskirts of Shewsbury a bit of a drive from the black country through Bridgenorth & Much wenlock on to the A5, it took just over an hour to get there. The 2 lakes being used for the tie are Mallard & Horseshoe the latter had been left open for us by the gaffer, which i thought was very good of him as there were only 5 of us that could make it as the rest of the lads were all at work. After a walk around the Mallard with a cuppa it was obvious to us that there were plenty of fish in the lake as there were lots of fish on top and some down the margins. The only thing i was a bit concerned about was that at a lot of fishery's at the moment the fish you can see on top in the sunshine are not feeding fish they seem to be pairing up ready for spawning?.
After we returned to the car park there was one of our gang missing BIG Ritchie had got his trolley full of tackle and was already heading towards where he wanted to fish, now as the name suggests Horseshoe lake is that shape with a very pronounced point that sticks out halfway into the lake. Ritchie was off under starters orders halfway around the lake before the rest of us had even got the tackle out of the cars, i had asked the gaffer while we were paying our peg fees & buying some fishery pellets that peg 19 looked like a flier he said "yes". Now i have known Ritchie for around 25 years and over the last few years he has struggled with his weight ( 25 stone+ ) but he was making linford christie look slow? So with peg 19 gone the rest of us went on to 4 of the other pegs being used in the supercup as Ken or contact from Morgans had sent us the peg numbers and sections that were to be used on the match itself. I went for peg 13 up in the top half of the lake it didn't look as good as some of the pegs on the lake but someone had to fish it. The one good thing i did like about the peg was that peg 11 was in to my right but to my left Ritchie was the next peg in that meant i had 5 empty pallets to look at? ( to be honest we all had loads of room as there are only 2 sections of 3 anglers that's 6 pegs on a 24 peg pool in on the match, and 18 pegs on the 48 peg mallard pool?).
I won't bore you with the rigs i set up as i changed them a bit during the day as we were on a practice i was going to try different baits as we had made a few phone calls and put the feelers out we had heard that pellet, worm & caster and meat & corn all worked on there day's so i had brought a bit of everything. What we did find out was that most of the matches held on here are afternoon jobs as it seemed that a lot of the locals fish down the edge as the day wears on, the supercup match is 12-5. So with this in mind i fished worm & caster at 13m up and down( although it was only 3 1/2 ft deep from 6m to 16m), pellet at the bottom of the shelf at 6m and a margin line to my left at 6m under a small tree which i fed caster & corn.
After around 10 mins i had my first fish a 8oz skimmer then a couple of rudd and another skimmer, after around 45 mins i had caught a few silvers but no carp so i decided to try up in the water on worm. Ritchie had a couple of carp by now but the rest of us were only catching silvers, up in the water only produced the same result then john on peg 11 hooked a couple of carp one coming off and landing the other one. I switched to the 6m pellet line where i had been priming with 6-8 4mm pellets every couple mins for 1 1/2 hours, had a couple of big skimmers around 1lb apiece but i was missing a lot of bits on 6mm expanders. I felt that the missed bite's were from smaller skimmers that couldn't get the pellet in there mouths and with no 4mm hook pellets with me i started to cut the 6mm expander's in half. That seemed to work for a bit with a small run of 8-9 skimmers before the line went dead, with a quick look down my margin swim for 10 mins with 2 perch for my efforts another change was called for. I decided to try pellet up in the water to try to avoid the attentions of the silvers and try to catch one of the carp that were sunbathing on the top, first put in on the pellet shallow rig and i had hooked my first carp of the day and this was without feeding. At around 4lb not a bad start i thought but 30 mins later it proved to be the one and only carp that was willing to feed on my pellet shallow rig. After doing the rounds on all my lines again and with only silvers to show for my efforts i decided to put some bait in down my margin line and go for a walk to see how the others were getting on. Ritchie had caught the most carp, dave on peg 24 had 1 carp but was catching a silver a bung on worm shallow, ollie on peg had one big carp and some silvers and john on peg 11 had got around 4 carp but had lost as many foul-hookers down his 2 margin swims. When i got back to my peg i saw a swirl down my margin line over the 3 pig pots of caster & corn that i had put in before i went walk-about, within 30 seconds i was connected to a proper fish and a nice 8lb mirror was netted after that i managed to land 8 carp form my margin swim before we decided to call it a day. When i was catching from the margin i found out that if i went straight back in after having a fish and fed with a kinder pot of bait i couldn't get a proper bite, but if i fed with a big pot and left them to it for 2-3 mins when i went back over it i got a fish almost immediately. I think that the shallowness of the margin (1ft) and the bright sunlight was spooking the fish which were reluctant to fed with my pole waving over there heads?
We decided to weigh the fish as you can use your nets although we weren't fishing for money as Ritchie had put pay to that by plonking himself on the flier (we were going to have a couple of beer tokens each?). Ollie had 26lb, john 32lb, me 50lb, ritchie had 60-70lb although he tipped them back before we got there with the scales despite 3 of us shouting him not to ( we must get his battery's changed) and dave had 34lb.
We had a least caught a few fish and learnt a few things about the fishery and it looked like most of the carp were caught late as we had been told. The lads are going back for a practice match booked on mallard on saturday but unfortunately i have got to go to work so me and stav are going to fish the open on here sunday.