Today was the first match of our third visit to White Acres this year – this time we’ll be staying for two weeks, the first being more of a holiday week before moving on to the Maver festival next Monday. Today’s match was one of the regular Monday residents’ matches with the anglers spread across Twin Oaks, Acorn, Canal and Trelawney – like most people in the queue for the draw I was hoping to see Twin Oaks 16 in the palm of my hand, and I thought I had when Twin Oaks 11 flashed before my eyes!
So I was on the right lake but as most of you will know the pegs around the famous number 16 on the low numbered Twin Oaks tend to dominate with the early pegs only really being any good if the wind is blasting the wrong way (i.e. from the right into peg 1). Putting that to one side there was still a lot of play for as I was in a section with the other pegs in the middle of the lake (importantly not 14-18) and today would prove a good practice for next week’s Maver festival should I draw on this lake again.
Spot the seagull
As per usual I seemed to have next to no time to set-up (the 90 minutes between draw and all-in on these matches seems minuscule when compared to the two and a half hours you get on the festivals) and by ten thirty I only had a single tip rod ready so I started on that! Unfortunately by midday I’d only managed three carp (two on the method feeder and one on the straight lead) so it was time to get off my arse and set-up a pole rig for the 5m line and another for the right-hand margin.
All the gear ..
The margin line proved to be something of a waste of time (literally) as despite seeing lot of swirls over my riddled meat and micros I never had a bite from a carp – perhaps it was too shallow (12"), too early in the day or the topography wasn't right (there was a massive undercut and as the platforms are set back it was hard to get tight to the bank) – but luckily the 5m line proved to be pretty decent as I caught the balance of my 60-10-0 from this approach, just enough to secure a fortunate section win by a couple of pounds. As it turned-out I only needed another 17lb to make the frame and with hindsight not wasting half of my match on the feeder/margins and focussing solely on the 5m line would probably have got me to 100lb plus – if only it was as easy as that!!!
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