Acorn saturday open.

A bit late doing the blog, but I've not felt to good since yesterday lunchtime. Severe headache. I guess staring at a float all day didn't help. Only five fished, which yet again, is a piss poor turn out for a venue that's still fishing well. I drew peg 36 which I was quite happy with as that area has been pretty good of late. Mark Walsh drew 12 and the other guys I can't say I knew. Got to the peg and dipped my hand in the water and felt that it was damn cold. That and it being pretty clear, and bright sunshine meant it might be a bit tougher today than it has been. I set up three rigs. A .1 shallow slim for against the island, but although I fed the line all day there were no signs of anything over there, so that was tried once and then left alone. A paste rig for the 2+2 line over micros. And a .15 slim to fish maggot over ground bait in the margins. I started on the paste line but it took 20 minutes for the first bite, but it was foul hooked so can't realy say it was a bite. But it did go into the net. Happy days!. Then it was a case of missed bites that I think we're liners. So after 40 minutes and one more lost fouler I switched to the right margin. I took a couple in the next 30 minutes but even though there were a few coming in on the feed they were spooking very easy. Think they could see the line. There was nothing showing in the left margin so all my fish for the first three hours came from the right. I tried the paste line again as it was fizzing but again only liners. So I changed to a pellet rig and tried that but that produced the same result. So it was back into the margin. By half way I had 6 carp for around 25lb, so it wasn't going too well. Then the sun vanished and the light dropped considerably. That completely changed things and the fish got more confident. Even though it wasn't hectic it picked up alot and I took fish from both sides. I did loose alot, about 15 I recon, included one good fish that went past the next platform and was going around the corner towards the bridge before it doubled back and went around an old drainage pipe, about 6 meters past the next platform, that has been lifted up from the bottom and is stuck two feet out the water. They seemed to want a bigger bait today and 8 maggots on the hook was what produced alot more and faster bites. In the end I had around 20 carp and 4 good F1's for 90-02. Mark was being his usual self saying he'd struggled, but weighed 102-11. He seems to have an aversion to telling the truth about his catch, so I never believe a word he says.  My catch was second on the day. I guess it's gonna start to get harder now as the weather gets colder.

1st, Mark Walsh 102-11 peg 12
2nd Stu Barnett 90-02 peg 36
3rd Luke ? 84-13 peg 9