Greenhill Farm (Jim's) Sunday 7/11/10

Hi folks, me & Stav had been invited to this club/open match at Jims pool but we had a Halesowen club match booked on the same day at Castlecroft on the canal which Stav decided to go on, as i have not had a good draw on our canal yet i decided to go on the pool match instead with a mate of mine Alan Fleet. The match had come about when Alan's club had a bit of a mix up with some dates so instead of letting Jim down with the booking they decided to ask the club members if they wanted to fish it first then threw it open to fill some more places. There was 14 guys turning up for this match so when me & Alan got there we had an easy job of pegging out just putting 7 pegs on each bank with roughly every other peg in we had a bit of room, i have only fished this pool around 3 times before so a bit of digging about was required about how to attack it and after asking a few people it seemed to be straight forward with maggot, caster & corn the main baits on the pole & lead. It looked like you needed to draw on the car park bank as it was deeper than the opposite bank and after a night of 3c with a cold wind it made the draw paramount, the corner peg on the car park bank was the flier draw we were told as it had won the last 2 match's on there including Wednesday's match with 144lb nearly 80lb clear of second!
In the draw bag i went and out popped peg 5 on the opposite bank just over halfway up, Great! my usual crap draw arm had struck again and i think i have to go back to the middle of September since the last time i had a draw i was happy with at least i had Dave (crack-off the legend) for company on peg 3 so at least the banter would keep us going. The peg i drew was only 2 pegs away from where i had won my section off on a match during the summer and remembered it to be quite shallow, on plumbing up the pole line i found only 3 1/2ft of water at 13m which was as far as i wanted to go in the wind which was quite strong blowing down the pool from left to right. With the guy's on the opposite side claiming 5 1/2ft of water at 6m i feared the worst after the cold night we had so with this in mind the lead rod was the first thing out of the bag and i set up 2 pole rigs as follows.
Rig 1, 13m line a 4 x 14 j-8 range float, 0.16 mainline to a 0.14 hook-length and a 16 tosciro hook, 13 hollo elastic.
Rig 2, 8m line the same as above just a 4 x 12 float.
Rig 3 was my lead rod with 6lb mainline, a 1/2 bomb, 0.16 hook-length which was 18" to a size 2 tuerbertini 175.
There are a few strange rules at Greenhill's Farm such as no hair rigs, no pole pots between March & October and no leads in-between the same months but no feeders at all? There are no pellets at all here so that makes bait selection easy i had brought 3 tins of corn, 2 pints of maggots & 1 pint of casters plus a few worms for the hook as a change bait.
On the whistle i fed the 13m line with a few grains of corn & 1/2 a pot of maggots & the same on the 8m line but with casters & corn instead of maggots, i hooked a grain of corn on the lead rod & cast into the middle of the pool firing a few grains around the lead.
Alan who had draw opposite me was the first into a fish after around 10mins the he had another next put in so he was off and running but after around 45mins on the lead without even a liner it was time to try the pole as the guy to my right was netting his second carp on the pole at 10m, i tried corn & maggot at 13m but to no avail so i tried the 8m line without a bite again. The only guy catching on our bank was the guy to my right with 4 fish after 1 1/2 hours there was the odd fish being caught around the pool but most were struggling, then i had a skimmer & a roach on the maggot at 13m but the tow was pushing the rig through the peg to fast so i changed the 4 x 12 rig for a 0.50gr rig and used the 4 x 14 rig for the 8m line to slow the float down a bit. I foul hooked a carp on the 8m line which pulled out but a least there were signs in the peg at last, i missed a couple of bites on the 13m line on corn but felt the rig wasn't right so after pulling the olivette down to 6" away from the hook & adding another 1" to the depth hooked the next fish a 4lb carp. With nearly 2 hours of the match gone i had at last got my first carp but the guy to my right was netting no5 so i was well behind but over the next hour i managed 3 more while he had only i more to make it 4-6 by the end of the 3rd hour, during the 4th hour i had 6 carp 1 f1 & a couple of small skimmers to put me 10-8 in-front of the guy to my right but the gut to my left was now catching well at about the same rate as i was. The last hour slowed up a bit as the wind died and the pool went flat calm but i managed 4 carp on the maggot as i stopped getting bites on the corn, Alan opposite had caught on and off through out the match plus he had got one big lump of around 10lb the 2 flier pegs in the car park had caught well. It had turned out to be a good ending to a very slow start on our shallow bank but when you give them a 2 hour head start it is always going to be hard to pull them back, i felt that at the start the fish were just not there after the cold night but when they started to feed in the shallower water they were very finicky and my rig was not right but after putting the heavier rig on i was presenting the bait better. I was getting indications on the float but not proper bites but i got a gut feeling that they were there but not feeding freely, i decided to up the float size as opposed to putting more line on the deck to slow the rig down as i feel that you get to many false bites & foul-hookers fishing the corn to far over depth. We started the weigh-in and peg 1 had 28lb next had 23lb Crack-off had 25lb on peg 3 and the guy to my right on peg 4 had 9 fish for 34lb my 14 fish went 50lb 8oz, the guy to my left had 41lb and the last peg on our bank had 31lb so at least i was the best weight on my bank which was our section. Over on the other bank 22lb & a D.N.W who they reckoned had around 30lb then peg 10 had 47lb before Alan had 53lb odd to put him in the lead with the help of a 10lb 10oz fish, Keith on peg 12 had 25lb odd then peg put 52lb on the scales with the help of 2 3lb+ perch to put him second with just the flier peg to go, the end peg flier lived up to its reputation with a match winning 69lb not a big weight but still enough to win the match. I feel that if we had not had such a cold night that the weights would have been a lot better but i was glad to have caught in the end and win my section, if i could have had an odd fish the first 2 hours
i would have been second as i was only 3lb short. Thanks to Alan for inviting me & taking me cheers mate & thanks to Crack-off for making us all laugh on the end whistle when he was playing a carp that tired to get under his pallet & after much mickey taking( loosing one on his last visit around the leg) he got it out he said it would be on his next DVD How NOT to loose carp under the pallet LEGEND!