All the Gear, No Idea: 18 May 2015, Twin Oaks (White Acres)

Well this year's Garbolino Spring Classic festival at White Acres has started as last year's ended - with a trip to the high numbered Twin Oaks and a right old soaking from some of Cornwall's finest liquid sunshine!!!

Bring me sunshine ...

This year I've been randomly drawn into C section and as a result my rotation will be: Twin Oaks (high numbers) today, Trewaters (bottom lake) Tuesday, Twin Oaks (low numbers) Wednesday and finally Trewaters (top lake) on Thursday. Of course all of these lakes are pretty similar (in the sense that they all have a far bank to cast to and are well stocked with carp and F1s), so I'm not sure the section rotation makes much of a difference - though looking at the list of names I at least managed to avoid the other two anglers that filled last year's frame (Harry Billing and Bradley Hancock).

Yes, that's my hand!

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

My draw today put me on peg 27 - pretty much in the middle of the lake and pretty much in the middle of my sub-section. (In this festival every peg is used on every lake (each has 18 pegs) and the Twin Oaks high numbered lake is split 19-24, 25-30 and 31-36.) A great deal of work has been performed by the White Acres fishery staff over the winter on Twin Oaks - this work was very necessary and done to help protect the badly undercut banks from collapse. However it has left the low numbered Twin Oaks (where I'll be on Wednesday) looking a little bare, though the main work on the high numbered Twin Oaks seems to have been reserved for the parallel bank to the left of peg 36.

The view to the left from peg 27

I had planned to cover the option of the long pole shallow today, but given the bitterly cold and strong left to right wind I kept most of the pole in the bag and set-up two margin rigs (both with red Hydro and SconeZone V6 0.2g floats, but one with 0.19 Guru N-Gauge straight through to a size 14 MWG hook for fishing bunches of dead red maggots and the other also on 0.19 but into an 0.17 hooklength featuring a size 16 MWG with a hair-rigged pellet band for fishing 8mm pellets), a rig for on the deck at top kit plus two (black Hydro, 0.19 mainline, 4x14 KC Carpa Force, 0.15 hooklength, size 16 LWG, hair-rigged pellet band) and my usual pellet feeder set-up consisting of 8lb Daiwa Sensor reel line, 30g small Preston Innovations pellet feeder, 10cm 0.22 hooklength, size 16 QM1 and a hair-rigged pellet band.

All the gear ...

As per usual I started my match by trying and failing to catch an early edge munter on the pole so I was soon on the pellet feeder across to the margin of the far bank - the first hour was pretty slow with just 3 F1s and a skimmer to show for my efforts, and to make matters worse two other fish (probably F1s) fell-off for no good reason at all!

A rare sight today

The second hour was even worse though - just an eight ounce skimmer on the pole (at top kit plus two on a 6mm pellet) and another lost fish on the pellet feeder. By this time I only had about 12lb - luckily three carp and a skimmer (all on the pellet feeder) in the third hour boosted me up to about 22lb after 180 minutes, hardly pulling up trees, but in touch with most in the section if somewhat behind James Wilkinson to my right on peg 26.

Groundbait down the edge didn't work today

Ultimately the final two hours were also hard work with just an F1 and two carp on the feeder and nothing in the margins - despite initially feeding little and often with pellets then looking for a big hit with dead red maggots over four cups of my Old Ghost edge mix.

Spot the seagull

In the end my fish weighed 30-14-0, miles behind James Wilkinson's 60lb plus, but just enough for second in section ahead of Dale Hancock (29-0-0), Paul Pleasant (28-2-0) and Keith Vaughan (24-4-0) - talk about close weights!!! As a result I'm 23rd out of 72 after day one (but with the same points as 14th) so it's all to play for going into day two.