Blythe Waters Open Tuesday 26/10/10

Me & Stav had planned this day a few months ago as he had booked the week off but i had no holiday left so we just went on my usual Tuesday off, we had planned to just go on the Bridge pool for a practice for the forthcoming pairs as i have only fished the pool once and Stav has never fished it. On the Monday Stav rang Gail who runs the fishery to make sure the pool was free but he was told that the open match was on there, so we decided to fish it as we know some of the guy's who fish there including Warren who runs them. The day started off badly when we drove to our local cafe only to find out it was shut (disaster)! Thanks to Gail for cooking us a good breakie it might be the best part of the day the weatherman had forecast a very wet & windy day, as we sat in the cafe talking to Gail she informed us that they don't draw for the open until 10am this was only 8.45am as we thought the draw would be a normal 9.00am jobie, as we had plenty of time to waste we had a walk around the pool looking at the pegs that are being used in the pairs league looking for likely fish holding areas. Just before 10am the draw took place and i pulled out peg 31 in a corner then Stav pulled out peg 23 apparently a flier that won the match on saturday with 63lb, all the locals said about my peg was that it is a deep peg with 7ft+ of water and if the fish have gone there it is a good peg if not it is a hard peg i was hoping for the first option as we had 2 more hard frosts on Saturday & Sunday night. When i got to my peg i looked at the water trying to look for inspiration how to tackle it there was a areator at around 20m+ away open water in-front of that & a nice sweeping right hand corner that looked fishey but very snaggy with a lot of tree roots down there. I decided to set up a normal autumn/winter pellet & corn attack at 13m, a 6m maggot line for anything that swims and a pellet & corn job 14.5m up the edge, i was going to ignore the aerator as on Cherries pool they don't seem to hold a lot of fish as there is a lot of other features in the pool with islands and floating booms, unlike a square/oblong shaped pool where the aerators are the only features.
I set up a .5gr j-range float for the 13m line in 7 1/2ft of water a 18 toscirco hook to 0.14 line & 11 hollo elastic, a similar set up for the 6m line only with a 18 808 hook 0.12 line & double no5 elastic the depth was about 3-4 inches deeper than the 13m line?, for the edge rig i went for a 4x14 float of the same make as there was 4 1/2ft of water down the edge (my normal edge rigs weren't long enough) 0.14 line to a 16 tosciro hook with 13 hollo elastic.
I decided to keep things simple and stick to the 3 lines as the weather was getting worse as the day wore on with wind & rain lashing down it was a case of baton down the hatches & hold on to the pole, luckily most of the wind was off our back on our bank with some on the other side getting it full in the face. For bait i had brought some 2 pints of micro pellets, 1 1/2 pints of maggots & 2 tins of corn, nice & simple i had also got a pint of pinkies if all else failed, i had also got a few different hook baits plus some g/bait if i had drawn an island peg which i left in my bait bag.
On the whistle i fed the edge with 1/4 a pot of micros & a few grains of corn, the 6m line got 1/2 pot full of maggots and i started on the 13m line with just 3 grains of corn & a small fruit shoot size pot of micros looking to put very little bait on this line after the 2 heavy frosts the weekend.
I had a couple of very small dink's on the float before i hit my first bite after around 15mins which turned out to be a 30z skimmer falling to a 4mm expander, another 10mins went by before my next bite which turned out to be another skimmer of the same size. Next put in i hit a better fish which gave me a bit of a run around with 11 hollo elastic before i netted a 4lb carp, with around 45mins gone and no more action i put a piece of corn on the hook and hit my second carp of the day which was around the same size as the first. It was looking good as no one i could see was catching but after i spent the next 30mins biteless it was time for a look up the edge, i put a grain of corn on and shipped out 14.5m to where i had potted some bait in from the start i was getting odd dips now and then but nothing i could hit then i got a proper bite which was a 1lb carp. On both lines i was getting small nock's & dink's which i thought were the skimmers that seemed to be missing as no one was catching them normally you can catch 10lb+ of without any carp off any peg it looked like the frosts had been to much for them, it looked like being a hard day as i still couldn't see anyone catching much of note. The rest of the match was very slow and at the all-out i had managed 5 carp & 4 skimmers plus around 6 small roach which was all i had on the maggot line, 2 of the carp were only 1lb each but one of my skimmers was around the 2lb mark. The guys around me hadn't caught at all with only 2-3 carp each neither had Stav who had managed only 1 carp + a few skimmers & roach, you know how the story goes just as the whistle went the rain stopped uncanny how many times that happens ain't it! it had rained virtualy non stop for most of the match. As Warren started to weigh in there was a couple who just broke double figures with 12-13lb until we got to Warren who had found a couple of carp+ some better skimmers putting 22lb on the scales, the next peg put 19lb on then the best weight of the day on peg 18 was 27lb. On my bank there were 5 pegs in which i was the best weight with 18lb 6oz Stav had 11lb and the next 2 guys just breaking double figures, the last 2 guys to my right on pegs 33 & 35 had 10lb & 17lb respectively, i had come 4th overall when they were only paying the top 3 so i was one out of the money by a pound! Crap! Never mind it will only take a week to dry the kit out, i had to throw the maggots & pinkies away after the match as they were every where the pinkies were in the bottom of my bag zipped up & in a bait box with the lid on but still managed to get wet as there was 2 inches of water in the bottom of my bag! I hope the weather gets a bit more settled before the start of our pairs league in a few weeks as you need the skimmers to feed if the carp don't show up in numbers which were missing today.