Acorn saturday open.

Bit late posting this one but I've been a bit busy since Saturday. With the weather looking pretty good and last week's weights I was hoping the form shown by this fishery would continue. Only 8 turned up today which was a bit of a disappointment. Into the draw bag and peg 7 comes out. Not drawn this for ages after a run of drawing it 6 times in eight matches at the start of the year. Three rigs and a bomb rod were set up. A .1 shallow slim to fish the far side. A .4 slim to fish 2+1 in about 5 feet. And a .15 slim to fish the margins either side. I like my home made Slim's. Pellet was to be fished everywhere today as it was all I had on me. My left margin would be fished over GB and the right just loose fed to see which worked best. As I wasn't quite ready at the start I chucked the bomb out with 8mm pellet, to the corner of the island towards the bridge while I fed my other lines. Before I'd finished pinging pellets across the tip pulled round and a 3 pounder found itself in my net. I then fed my margin lunes with the pole cup then chucked the bomb out again. The tip flew round again but I missed it. By the time I reeled in there were carp in the margin. So I dropped an 8mm in the right margin. 15 minutes later and 4 carp landed I thought the peg was on fire. Then the fire brigade turned up and put it out. The next two hours produced 1 fish. Even though the carp were feeding on the loose feed they totally ignored the hook bait. Only the odd liner moving the float. A try across only produced one fish. The bomb line had dried up too. Then at the midway point I started to get the odd fish. After 4 hours I had around 60lb in the net so I thought bugger it and upped the feed. That had the desired effect and the last two hours I put around 100lb in the net from both margin lines. It seemed the more GB I put in the more fish turned up. Lesson learnt for next time. Over on peg 5 Mace Graham had a very similar day as me with a long dead stretch after a flying start. At the end I guessed at around 160lb and ended up putting 163-2 on the scales for second on the day. Mace weighed 128-6 for 4th. The match was won by Lydney bagging machine Norm Sterry on peg 15 with 225-4. A good day again. The place is just getting better.

1st Norn Sterry  225-4, peg 15
2nd Me with 163-2, peg 7
3rd Mark Walsh 129-14, peg 21
4th Mace Graham 128-6, peg 5