Alvechurch Fisheries 3/10/10

Hi folks, today's match is a Halesowen club match booked on the Horseshoe Pool at Alvechurch Fisheries i had fished here years ago but hadn't heard of anyone fishing it for years, that was until a mate of mine Mark told me he was thinking of buying it and turning it into a fishery again as it had been left unattended and overgrown for years. Me and Stav had been earlier this year for a practice and to say we struggled would be an understatement with only a couple of small carp and the odd silverfish to our names, but it was still very cold and it is a new fishery which all need time to settle and mature. I had been keeping an eye on the results through out the summer months and to be fair most of them had been quite good with the odd ton here and there, one or two of the match's seemed to be two or three good weights then the rest of the field struggling. The last open on here was 2 weeks ago when 47lb had won with the week before that 105lb so it was a bit up and down ( like the weather at the moment!), Mark knows that he needs to put some more fish in but can't stock any i until the right time of year. Mark is going to be running a silvers winter league on here so a week before we were due to fish he had taken some of the silverfish out of one of the other pools (house pool) and put then into the horseshoe pool in readiness for the league. There was 18 brave (stupid) soles turning out for this one with a couple of the lads not turning up after seeing the weather on the morning! RAIN,RAIN & more RAIN to say it was p*****g it down would be an understatement, frontwards, backwards & sideways all day until the whistle blew for the all out then the sun came out as usual! Mark cooked us a good breakfast in the newly built cafe but as we looked out into the gloom of the rain it looked like being the best part of the day. I drew out peg 28 from the bag and Stav drew peg 7 on the opposite side of the pool at least both of us had drawn with a throw to the island, i hadn't fancied drawing in the bottom bowl with no island and the pegs looked a bit tight although Mark had said that all the carp were coming from that area.
I set up a small method feeder for the island and just two pole rigs i was going to fish the worm & caster at 9m and the pellet at 14.5m, for bait i had brought 1/2 kg of worms, 2 pints of casters, 1 bag each of micro & 4mm feed pellets, 1 bag of green swimsitm for the method, i had also brought the usual array of hook baits 6&4mm expanders, meat, corn dead maggots.
On the whistle i potted in a full pot of chopped worm & caster at 9m & a pot of micros with a few 4mm in on the 14.5m line then threw the feeder tight to the island which is only around 25m way on my peg. First chuck with a maggot feeder for Phil on the next peg resulted in a carp around the 4lb class then 10mins gone my tip wrapped around and i was in, NO, i wound the feeder back (minus a carp) only to find that i had been broken? Crap how had i been broke on 0.20 line? all that was left was a loop of line i had been done on my own knot! Plonker! never mind it was early days( i hate inline method feeders). I had to wait another 30mins for my next bite when the tip wrapped around again only to be left with no fish again( no i hadn't got broke again)? what was going on Phil had got 2 carp now but i hadn't seen anyone else have a fish apart from Stav who had a what looked to be a lump carp early on. I stayed on the tip until the until the 1 1/2 hour mark had gone without anymore signs of fish, a switch to the pole was called for but i didn't hold out to much hope as i couldn't see anyone else catching on it. I put a worm head on and shipped out to my 10m line where i had fed some worm from the start, it took me 10mins to get my first bite a 3oz roach then a further 10mins for my second a 2oz perch. I went onto my pellet line at 14.5m with a 4mm expander over some micro's and had a 6oz skimmer straight away, i then missed a bite before connecting with a better fish which turned out to be a 3lb carp at last! Unfortunately it was a false dawn as i couldn't raise another bite on anything but i wasn't on my own as no one was catching, Phil in the next peg had got his 3 early carp and lost one but it looked like it wasn't going to get any better so i decided to sit out for carp as there was no sign's of doing any good fishing for silvers. I abandoned the worm line and just fished the method & pellet line until the whistle, i had a carp of around 8lb on the method from the island and another of 3lb on the pole in the last hour. During the match a couple of times i potted in a few micro's on the pole line only to have a fish swirl at the float up in the water, a few times during the match there was odd fish topping by the island in Phil's peg and towards the end of the pool where Ollie was sitting so maybe i should have set a shallow rig up? Ollie had managed to extract 4 carp from his peg in on the car park bank late in the match but most had suffered a bad match with only odd carp caught & a distinct lack of silvers. The best weight on the opposite side of the pool was Stav with 1 carp + a few silvers for 14lb odd but most of the weights were very poor with some only weighing a few silvers with no carp, my 3 carp went 15lb 2oz then Phil's 2 went 15lb 6oz putting me 2nd. Ollie's 4 carp went 21lb odd with only Martin left to weigh he had won the match, Martin who i couldn't see because of the island had managed to find a few big skimmers + some roach for 14lb odd relagating Stav into 4th by a few ounces. It had been a very hard match in very wet conditions but i was happy to come out of it in 3rd place, i was left ruing the loss of the one on the method that broke me costing me at least 2nd or might have cost me the match had it have been big enough? Mark has got big plans for Alvechurch Fisheries and he knows that its going to take a lot of time & hard work as he has just acquired some land adjacent to the fishery, i for one hope that he makes it and i am sure that he will.