Fished club match on our lake near Wraysbury, last minute arrangement rounding up most of the usual suspects . Fished it as a walk off as a few carp anglers already present and drew last away which I don't mind as gives you plenty of time to make your mind up. Quite fancied the idea of the swim in the bay just as you come in which had the wind into it, or one of the swims around the culvert, neither of which areas get fished much and are rarely used in matches unless we get a bigger than usual turnout. In the event went to neither, as very unexpectedly no-one opted for either of the two swims on the front of the island so I took the left hand one. Set up method feeder, cage feeder and also a waggler as there were a lot of smaller fish topping and thought wag and mag might be worth a look to see if regular feeding would pull a few carp in.
Started on method at the swims usual range but thick blanket weed everywhere and a few exploratory chucks found the same in the slightly deeper gully about 45 yards out so after an hour and no signs came in on the waggler and quickly started picking up little roach. After 25 or so fish in half an hour though it quickly dried up and had a niggling lack of confidence of big fish on this line as had seen nothing moving closer than about 40 yards. By this time Don towards the far end of the road bank had had three carp so picked up method rod again , put a heavier feeder on and had an experimental loooong chuck. Bingo, only the odd strand of blanket weed so decided to stick it out on this line. Only a couple of liners for quite a while before with two hours to go (six hour match) the tip flew round on double corn and had a carp of 7 lb or so. Half an hour later, single corn and a lovely fish that gave me untold trouble when it tried to get round the corner of the island behind the tree in the water to my left, followed by another a bit smaller which went the other way through the pondweed and came in with about 10 lb of weed attached. Went quiet again until with 20 minutes to go pulled out of a real lump which just plodded slowly, and not very stoppably, off through the weed to the right and then pulled out of a much smaller fish for no obvious reason right on the whistle. Don had ended up with 5 carp and a tench but apparently his fish were a lot smaller so thought it could be tight between us, with not a great deal elsewhere and even a couple of blanks on the shallow side.
Scales reached me, Don had had 28-4 . My silvers net went 2-8 for that quick half hours work, bigger carp was 14-4 and the other two 19-3 between them so 35-15 and a welcome win. 17-8, two carp and some skimmers, was third and only single carp after that.
Off for a weeks barbelling at Bridgnorth next weekend and renewing my acquaintance with Wye Valley Brewery's finest..
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