Well I think it is fair to say I made a right pig's ear of that one, only really figuring-out what I should've been doing ten minutes from the end!
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| Round-up the usual suspects |
My home for the day was Gold Valley, Middle Lake 63 a peg that can be really good as it is in among the where the islands used to be - with the water level being quite low I actually found a spot at 14.5m slightly to the right that was just 12" deep, though in the main it was hard to find more than two and a half feet anywhere in the peg. I started on paste at top kit plus one and expected to get off to a good start but after 15 minutes I was biteless and giving the 12" swim a dabble earlier than expected - I could get bites here but they were very dodgy and I ended-up losing a frustrating number of fish.
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| All the gear ... |
All the time I'd been feeding 4mm hard pellets at 13m slightly to the left with the aim of catching shallow - this did work to a certain extent but after 90 minutes of feeding, tapping and slapping my jigga I had to sack it off as it just wasn't working well enough. (There were plenty of fish in the peg but they seemed preoccupied routing around in the silt and sending-up blooms of the black stuff every few minutes.)
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| Nice day for it |
With little option I returned to the 12" swim and I eventually caught a few on a 4.5mm expander over potted micros and 4mm hard pellets, though as the match progressed the number of missed bites and lost fish went through the roof with the fish seemingly coming-up in the water despite it being just a foot deep! I tried my best to keep them on the deck but they just weren't having it, so towards the end I switched to fishing just 5" deep and it was one a bung!!!
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| Plenty of sun today |
In the end I limped home with 58 fish for a level 55lb, one out of the money as Dan Cooper took the section with 69-8-0 - well done to Craig Meadows on the win and Giovanni Barbato on taking second spot. If only I'd have switched to fishing super-shallow a little earlier!
Until next time ...
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