Day two of the Reepham spring festival and it was back to Bungalow Lake, peg 18 this time – this peg is on the road bank but similar to the peg that I drew in the practice match (13) in that it had a spare platform (though this time to the right, so not as convenient for a right-hander).
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| All the gear ... |
Having concluded from the practice match that it wasn’t really worth fishing the long pole shallow I settled on a two-pronged attack – short pole on the deck straight in front and a line in front of the spare platform (though on discovering that this swim was only 15” deep I wasn’t that confident given the sunny weather and fairly clear water). For company I was something of a ‘Dutch sandwich’ as I had David Holland to my left and Paul Holland to my right (on 15).
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| David Holland to my left |
Starting on the short pole with an expander over micros I was soon getting plenty of bites though I must’ve missed a thousand in the first hour – though the rudd weren’t really a problem today my swim seemed to be full of 4 ounce crucians that were proving rather tricky to connect with! By the end of that first hour I had loads of fish in the net but only about 8lb in weight as the majority of the fish that I was catching were either the aforementioned crucians or equally small tench, with just a few 1lb carp mixed in, so sooner than hoped it was over to the spare platform to my right.
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| Nice rope |
Things started slowly but at least I was getting proper bites and the 1-2lb carp that I was going to need to catch to do any good. Regular feeding of micros and 4mm hard pellets via a medium Guru pole pot eventually got the swim going, a switch from a 4.5mm expander to three dead red maggots on the hook also accelerated my catch rate and at one point I was into that lovely routine of ‘shipping-out, feeding, hooking a fish immediately’ that really gets the catch rate going. As we entered the final hour the action slowed dramatically – feeding a full pot of groundbait worked for a short while, but the second time I tried doing the same it killed the swim!
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| Nice caravans |
Dropping back onto the short pole led to nothing but missed bites so I spent the final 15 minutes fishing past the platform at 13m – this resulted in a couple of extra fish in the net but also a few lost foul-hookers as I was fishing away from the bank (I couldn’t get tight to the bank as the platform was in the way).
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| Nice spare platform |
Despite that rather anticlimactic end to the match I managed to put 59-1-0 on the scales, enough to win the section and the lake ahead of Dale Stones (48-1-0) and Mick Warner (44-7-0) – so going into the final day I’m lying in second place overall, tied with Nigel Lale on two section wins but over 50lb behind on weight countback!
