The talk at the draw was that both lakes will be as good as each other, but I did fancy any end pegs especially where the wind was blowing into that bank. My turn in the draw bag, out came Club 23 which is an end peg but not the end I really fancied, but an end all the same. I haven’t fished at the complex since the winter league a few months ago and with the recent mild weather I heard the weights have been reaching 100lb plus now! With this in mind I thought the only way I had any chance of winning was to fish the margins either side of my platform and shallow at about 6m where I could throw casters comfortably by hand.
My plan was to feed Super Skimmer Dark which included scalded micro pellets 50/50 as a slop and casters on one side of my margin and the other margin was to be fed with just casters and I was to see which one was best. The shallow line was fed with just casters out of my hand, about 6-8 constantly fed here. Simple!
switched when it slowed feeding some slop at the point in which I switched, it worked well. I was a bit concerned the F1’s weren’t as big as the mirror carp that the anglers down the other end of my lake where catching. I knew I was up against some very good local anglers here today and felt I was on for my target 100lb weight, so I stuck to my approach.
A move to my shallow line produced smaller F1’s but a good place to move to whilst I rested the margin lines. This was a really simple approach which without being here recently was working well. I added some line on the bottom and dragged it up the shelf from the deeper water in the margin, this caught me three quick Barbel up to 3lb, then on the whistle I hooked my first Mirror carp on my right hand edge swim, it was a good 8lb so a nice end to the match!
The scales arrived at my peg with already three weights over 100lb on the board, my two weighs went 118lb and good enough for 5th overall and pleased with my match. The anglers that had bigger weights mostly caught a good amount of the larger carp in the lake which just weren’t caught up my end of the lake so very pleased with my match.
Top Tip: Mixing the sloppy ground bait the night before makes sure all the fishmeal in the ground bait absorbs all the water and it is easier to achieve the right consistency. Another good tip is to scald micro pellets the night before to add to a sloppy mix, this does two things, it makes them very soft and also releases all the oils from the pellets!