Willow Marsh Sunday 15/8/10 pm

Back to Willow Marsh again this week for another afternoon match this time with Halesowen a.c which contains most of the same set of lads but with another couple of nutters for good measure and one foreigner Geordie Pet! Me & Stav went for the same routine of calvery + beer before the 1.30pm draw, when we got there they had done the draw for the pairs which is just a bit of fun for the day as well as a normal match. I was pleased to have drawn Martin Yardsley as he can catch a few all we needed now was a good draw, there were 3 more anglers than the week before so with 23 turning out we were all hoping to miss the dreaded dam wall. I pulled out peg 2 ( Stav's peg from last week) & Martin got peg 41 where Ritchie had 101lb from the week before, we were no more than 20m away from each other either side of the shallow bay. It looked like Stav's luck had deserted him drawing smack in the middle of the dam wall in the mid 20's, only time would tell if it was going to be the same as last week. After talking to the regulars a few fish were being caught on the pellet feeder early on as for some reason the fish don't seem to be caught shallow and after spending time on the pellet wagg last week for 1 fish i had set this up for this week. Great! after walking around to my peg waiting for the club anglers that were still packing up on the day match before we could start setting up, i realized that i was not going to be able to fish the feeder as i was stuck in the bay. If i had threw the feeder 30m out in-front of me i would have taken out 2-3 blokes out, the other thing i had not got was the long edge Stav had caught from the week before as due to the 3 extra blokes they had put in peg 43 which is next to peg 1 so cutting my edge in half! So within minutes i had no feeder line & no end peg advantage so i going to have to come up with another plan of attack quickly before the start. I decided to set up a shallow rig for the long pole and the same 4m line rig as i had used the week before the only difference i had made was to change the elastic, out with the red hydro and in went 2 preston 17h laccy's my margin rig was a preston durra 10 4 x 10. I had a nightmare with lost fish last week and while i didn't think that the red hydro was all to blame i certainly felt it was to strong in the shallow water, the 17h is still strong enough to play the fish out quickly but a lot softer than the red hydro? I had also decided to give the self-cocking paste floats another go so the jury was still out on these.
Bait for the day was 2 bags of fishery 4mm pellets ( 3 pints), 6 tins of corn, around 2 pints of paste made from 2mm pellets & some 8mm cubes of bait tech's polony meat. I was going to fish meat over corn down the edge so keeping my pellet supply for the paste & shallow lines.
At the all in i cupped a pot full of pellets on my 4m line & started throwing corn down my edge which was only on my top kit as the empty peg 1 to my right is cut back a bit and there is a mound of grass to fish to. I started on my shallow rig at 14.5m firing just 4-5 4mm pellets every 30 seconds lifting & dropping the rig, my rig was a drennan carp 4 0.3gr to 0.16 line and a 16 pr27 hook with a lasso for a 6mm hard pellet. Bob in the next peg hooked the first fish of the day after just 30 seconds a fight which lasted around 5 seconds as the fish ripped across the shallow bay taking his rig & 20 elastic with it ( he said he only had put the elastic in last year?). At around the same time Ritchie on peg4 had threw the feeder out apparently across Barry in peg 11 and a few swear words were exchanged between them, all this coupled with Bob's first Willow March carp encounter soon had all of the pool laughing and there was less than a minute of the match gone! After around 10 mins of pinging pellets out shallow & lifting/dropping the rig i hooked my first carp of the day, my 15h elastic soon had the carp in the net a 4lb'er. Martin foul hooked & lost his first carp shallow but most of the field was fish-less, after the first hour i had got 3 carp martin had got one & i was happy to be catching as most of the guy's hadn't caught anything. When i had my 4th fish only 10 mins into the second hour i was well happy to be catching a few as i thought if i could keep this up until the last 2 hours when the fish come in close like last week i would have a head start on all the others,(wrong). 2 hours gone i was still on 4 fish they were still there but wouldn't feed, all the fish i had so far were on my shallow rig with 6ft of line above the float so as to keep the pole off there heads. I tried a shorter line and spinning the rig with next to no feed but all this seemed to do was to get you a foul hooker as Martin was doing i lost 3 on the bounce, i came in on both pole lines but no fish & more worrying was that there were very little signs of life at all. It looked like the pool was fishing very hard as not a lot was being caught at all just the odd fish here and there, Geordie pet on peg 35 had played follow the leader by coming shallow on the long pole but i could see him spinning the rig and he too was loosing the odd fish. So back onto the long pole with the long line rig but despite changing depth i couldn't get another fish and now there were less sign's of fish moving so it was time to concentrate on my short pole lines, at last i started to get odd bites on the paste rig with 2 hours of the match to go i managed to hook 3 fish & land 2 of them 1 around 8-9lb. As far as i could see there was only me and Martin catching any fish with Ollie & Kev next to him having 2-3 fish each. Just as i was trying my margin line again an old friend & ex-club member came and sat on the grass behind me Matt Maginnis, as he asked how it was fishing my float buried and my one and only bite from the edge was on a nice 8-9lb fish. Matt was telling me how he had just been on a practice match at Evesham for the forth coming bank holiday weekend and how hard it was fishing even with worm & joker in, he had managed to weigh around 2lb of eye's with a couple of odd barbel the best he had heard of ( god do i miss the river like a hole in the head). I managed to land 2 more fish in the last hour on the paste and losing 2 more the last one 10 mins from the end breaking me on 0.20 line? Martin had caught well in the last hour down his edge saying he had got 10 fish at the all out, i had got 9 fish so it looked like he had done me in the last hour but a least we had caught a few most of the pool had fished very hard no where near as good as last week. We stared the weigh in on the dam wall, Dave last weeks ton virgin had 2 fish, Stav had 3 fish for 19lb winning the dam section? JB on the first peg off the dam wall had the first decent bag with 41lb, Stu managed a few beating Geordie off the next peg for the section 37lb to 35lb ( must try harder mate), the next decent weight was Ollie with 47lb then Martin with 71lb, i was next up with 60lb & that was about it next weight in my section was 22lb, Bash on peg 11 had 2 fish for 18lb & Jeff on flier peg 12 had 1 1/2lb of perch not hooking a carp all afternoon? The pool had totally switched off compared to last week but i was pleased to have drawn where most of the fish had come from ending up 2nd, yes i think me & Martin had won the pairs "just" with 131lb to Ollie & JB's 88lb from Stu & Geordie on 72lb. Well done to Martin for winning this one we showed "em the way mate!