Friday 8 February 2013

Fennes Ash Grounds

This Sunday I was off to the Fennes yet again for a match on Ash grounds lake, after all the ice had melted I wasn't really sure how it was going to fish. Previously the in form peg has been 55 as its full of F1s! I certainly wouldn't mind drawing here as if they feed your on them and if they don't then at least you can still catch roach on the bloodworm and joker.
As my luck seems to have left me at the draw bag lately, I went in to draw peg 14, basically the worst peg that was in! Roach don't seem to head up here very often, and you normally catch skimmers instead, but with the ice gone in would they even want to know?
Anyway, I decided on 2 pole lines and set up a bomb to chuck out some pop up bread or boilies just while I left the joker to settle. One line was 11meters in about 6 foot of water, ideally I would have liked to go atleast 13 for the skimmers but it was way to windy and I could only manage 11. My other line was 6 sections at an angle to my right, so about 5 sections out, just away from my other line, this was in about 4 foot of water, the reason for this line was to give me a starting point while the longer 'balled' in line could settle.
I started by putting a golf ball of joker in on the short line, and 8 orange sized balls on the long line, I then proceeded to chuck the lead out with some bread, 15 minutes was enough boredom on that so on the short line. Nothing. If you don't get a bite on this line within 10 minutes, you know its going to be hard!
No-one else had caught anything at this point from what I could see either. I gave the long line 15 minutes before chucking the bomb out again. To cut the next 2 hours out, I basically didn't get a bite until about 12 when I had a tiny perch! Over my balled in line bizarrely enough. By this point I was about 2lb of fish behind the two guys to my left on 10 and 12, these are really good roach pegs, all i could hope is that they moved up to me!
Im not one for normally walking about, but I was so bloody bored I took a wander around the lake, a few people were catching some small roach, no F1s were feeding and it was rock hard all over. I arrived back at my peg about 20 minutes later, sat down, got the long rig out with a caster on and it just buried! A nice 4oz roach! I started catching quite steadily, and found dead maggot to be the best bait, sometimes they just dont take caster confidently enough, and the fish were no smaller on dead maggot and I got quicker bites so I carried on bagging on this, after an hour it died off, so I took the risk of topping up with a small golf ball of joker, it didn't work! After 10 bite less minutes moving the rig about I decided to try my short line, I hadn't topped this up for a while cause its normally redundant after you catch on the balled in line. I dropped my rig in and it just buried  roach, roach and more roach. I don't know why they moved here, maybe Id overfed the long line? Maybe they wanted shallower water? who knows! But I wasn't complaining! Everyone was struggling at this point, and I was catching within a second of my float settling, I had a fantastic last half hour, and felt as though I should have done enough to beat the guy to my left, even though hed caught 2 hours before me!
I was the first to weigh in, and I had 79roach for 8lb 9oz, a fantastic weight seeing as id only caught properly for 2 and a half hours! The bloke to my left weighed in 7lb 2oz, so the last 30 minutes was what did it for me!
I went round with the weigh in, id beaten everyone down the left bank, including my new bills tackle team mates! Thats the 4th time ive drawn this bank and the 4th section ive won, certainly got something right!
Anyway, we got round to the last peg, Mr Banks! This was the important person to beat as I could get my all important £1 back, he was owning up to 5lb, which normally means 10lb. As he pulled his fish out he failed to mention hed caught a stray 3lb bream! That with his roach and a chunky perch went 9lb 8oz, another £1 I lost! Second week on the trott hes beaten me by less than 1lb as well! Gutted!
That put me 2nd in the match anyway, and I got my section so still got good points! This match was for the Huit cup as well  the huit cup was spread over 3 rounds this year, I managed to finish 1st in the first round and 2nd in the last 2 rounds, so only dropping 2 points meant I won the trophy as well.
In terms of the overall club championship, I am still leading, not sure by how much but I hope a considerable amount! Theres 5 matches left in the season, so hopefully I can hold things together and wrap it up!

Next week im off to our notley lake. My granddad went up there for a little look last week and blanked so i might not have much to look forward to! hopefully it was just the ice water that put them off!

Thanks for reading and see you next week! (providing I get a bite)


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