Woodlands View Open Sunday 9/5/10

Hi folks, back to Woodlands today for the first time since the end of the teams of 4 winter league and hoping for a few fish after yesterdays poor fishing at Spring Lea. After we had pooled up we learned that it was going to be a bit tight on the pegging today as we only had one side of Arles pool and all of High some 50 pegs but with 36 booked in it was going to make the draw very important? The chat before the draw was that Arles was favorite as it was going to be one in one out pegging on here 2, 4 ,6,8 etc, but on High they were going to put blocks of 3 pegs in 4,5,6 miss 7 out then 8,9,10 miss 11 out and so on around the lake. So a draw on Arles would be good but if you were going to pull out High you would have to draw a corner peg or on the end of your block of three to give you a bit of room the worst draw would be in the middle of a set of 3? Yes you've guessed it i drew peg 30 on high pool with 29 & 31 in i was smack in the middle of a set of 3? Stav put his sticky paw in and pulled out peg 4 on Arles a right flier with the boom in-front of him which you can reach with the pole and every other peg in( i wish i could draw like that? ).
When i got to my peg and started setting up the wind was blowing into corner pegs 35 & 4 ( 1-3 are never used as they are very tight and cut off pegs 33-35) setting up on peg 4 was Stu Ballard of maver midlands ( peg 3 had 131lb off it in the week? ) and on peg 35 was local hero & venue regular Ian Woods. Now peg 35 is one of those pegs that if you catch it right you will win the match off it or you will catch nowt a feast or famine peg as they call it, with woody moaning at the peg Mike Mason told him that an 0.A.P ( starlets vets ) had 85lb off it in the week so shut up moaning.
I set up the following rigs,
rig 1, 13m pellet line on the deck a 1.0gr maver jona float with 0.16 line to a size 3 175 hook with a olivette set 2ft from the hook and 3 no10 stotz spread out below that in around 9ft of water & black hydro elastic.
rig 2, 6m caster & corn line a 4 x 14 j8-range float 0.14 line to 16 tosciro hook set around 5 ft deep with a bulk of no8 stotz and 2 no 10 droppers & 13 hollo elastic
rig 3, shallow pellet rig drennan carp 4 0.30gr float 0.14 line to a 18 pr27 hook with a lasso tied on and set at around 18" deep & 13 hollo elastic.
ri 4, another shallow rig a preston pb2 float 4 x 12 0.14 line to 16 toscrio hook again set 18" deep for the caster if the carp didn't play ball & 13 hollo elastic.
With pegs both sides i decided not to bother with a margin rig as you ain't going to catch there with guys sitting on top of you. To my left i had Edd Warren for company so at least i had someone to talk to. Bait for the day was 2 pints of sonu comp 4mm feed pellets, 2 pints of casters and 3 tins of corn, plus various 6 & 8mm hook pellets & a bit of meat for the hook.
On the all in i put a pot full of 4mm pellets & a few grains of corn at 13m and started loose feeding casters at 6m with the odd grain of corn. I started on the shallow rig at 14.5m pinging 3-4 pellets at the float with a 6mm hard pellet on the hook, after only 2-3 mins the float shot under and my 13 hollo elastic came streaming out of the pole an 8 lb carp was soon in the net and a good start. Edd had a fish first put on the deck as well so we might have a few fish after all, 15 mins later without another sign and edd on fish no3 it was time for a look on the deck. first 3 put- ins on my 13m line produced 3 bites but no fish, my first thought was that i had put to much feed in and was getting liners so i tried corn on the hook with only half a kinder pot of feed bingo carp no 2 was on the way to the net.
This was the pattern of the first 2 hours with a few bites and odd fish but way behind edd who was catching fish regular but he guy to my right was catching less than me. At this point there was only edd and Les Thompson catching fish at any sort of pattern and a few moaning how hard it was. I went back on my shallow rig as edd had a couple of fish there and struggled to get a bite while edd had 4 fish on the bounce? I had one f1 shallow before trying my 6m line and missed a bite first put-in on corn, second drop i had a 4lb carp and third drop hooked and lost another as edd said it looks like the fish had finaly come close. He had feed pellet on his 6m line and had a look earlier for 1 skimmer, i had a barbel of around 4lb and another carp before the line went dead i had lost 3-4 foulhookers on the 6m line as i was loose feeding i thought they were off the bottom but i had only had odd silvers on caster over this line. I put a big pot of caster and corn in at 6m in an attempt to get the fish on the deck and stopped loose feeding, edd couldn't get a bite at 6m on the deck so tried his shallow rig over it and had 4 fish on it? I new that it was going to be hard to catch stuck in-between 2 guys but it was that apparent edd was getting more bites on the deck with an empty peg 32 to his left and he could catch odd fish shallow, the fish were reluctant to come pased his pole and feed to get to mine when he started fishing his 6m line my bites dried up? The last couple of hours saw us both struggling for odd bites and i never had another bite on my 6m line, just odd fish on the deck at 13m to keep us ticking over. Before to long the all out was sounded and we had a few fish in the sun and some good crack around the pool but a lot of the pegs we thought would produce had not and the first for an early bath was woddy gone before the scales had got to him.
When the scales came Les was winning with 85lb and next best weight was Chris Hill with 64lb both were on end pegs in there blocks of 3, edd tipped 81lb on the scales for second on the lake so far and my 56lb was forth on the lake so far, with no more weights on our bank only Klaus Fix having 40 something i went over to see stav on Arles.When i got there he was already putting his tackle in the car and no nets on his peg didn't bode well, he said he might have had 25lb but had tipped back. Lee Edwards had 44lb off peg 8 and the best weight off arles was Kev Slade off corner peg 16 with 63lb so arles had not lived up to its pre-match billing. After a quick tot up in my head that had put me 5th overall and a quick shout over to Ade Mason as to how many he was paying in the main list 4 came the reply??? shit 1 out, never mind i had won the section and had the best weight from anyone that had pegs in both sides? On reflection i had lost around 4 fish on my caster line and with less than 10lb off second i began the autopsy off the day did i feed it wrong?, should i have tried a different hook has i thought that the one i used was a little small?
are well we live to fight another day.