Mathern Mill Friday open

With this fishery on my doorstep its an easy decision to give this a go on Fridays. The weather forecast was for a wild day today but as they got the forecast so wrong yesterday it wasn`t surprising that today finished completely opposite to what they were saying. My bright red face is proof of that lol. Into the draw bag and out pops 16. A nice peg that is primarily a bomb peg with a 30 metre chuck to the end of the island. Though you still have to compete with 11 and 12 opposite that are the venue flyers that dont often fail to take the top spots.

So the bomb rod was the first to be set up. I wanted to experiment today and my plan was to fish a short line(2=2) over a big bed of groundbait and corn, just to see if the carp would settle on it or tempt the big skimmers and bream, that go to 5lb plus, would have a go. So a .4 Slim was set up for there. Only the margin pole set up today so the usual .3 SS margin was set for my right side in 2 feet of water and a .5 slim to fish the full 8.7 metres straight out over pellet. at the start 10 tennis ball size balls were put in on the short line and a few pellets out on the long line, then the bomb with an 8mm pellet was chucked out within a foot of the very inviting island vegetation.

Didn`t wait long and the tip was wrenched round and a 6 pounder was in the net. Out again and ten seconds later a 7 pounder hooked and landed. Then next chuck a 14 pounder. Pretty nice start with 20 minute gone and around 30lb in the net. But after that the bites dried up, which coincided with the sun coming out, and over the next 3 1/2 hours I only landed 3 more. I tired the other lines many times rotating around but there was nothing coming out anywhere on the pole lines. The only person that caught on the pole that I could see was Andy Fuller on aquarium 12 , where he was catching in his margin. Got to admit this margin fishing is baffling me at the mo. Not caught any margin fish for  ages. I just don`t see anything when I try. Best keep to the longer stuff. And my experimental line was an epic fail with just one tiny skimmer and a lost foul hooker that I connected with lifting the rig out at half depth. The last hour picked up for me on the bomb and I managed to put 5 fish in the net with a couple of doubles among them. Andy caught steadily throughout the second half of the match as did Terry ? ( a few new faces to me today) on peg 11. Winner on the day was Josh Anderson on peg 3 with 100-05 . No idea how he caught as he was out of sight around the island. Second was Terry, less than a pound behind, with 99-11 of bomb caught carp. Third was Andy on 12 with 90-07 of mainly margin munchers. I managed fourth with 12 carp for 79-12 all taken from the island.  Sounds strange to get near 80lb and say it was a poor days fishing but I only missed 2 bites all day and landed all I hooked except the foul hooked fish, but thats how it felt. But at least the weather was good with no torrential rain that was forcast. I`m looking like a strawberry today and my face is glowing, but ya cant complain about sunny weather.