Sunday 25th October 2015 – Sedges Tile Lake

I was the first to appear in the car-park, closely followed by Martin Western and Colin Lambert. Martin was wrapped up and heavily ‘diseased’, wishing he had stayed in bed. Chair Bob and George was next to arrived and I was immediately shown a yellow card by Bob for match booking offences!! People were talking about the amount of frost on their cars and whether the snap chill would put the fish off. We had a full compliment for the lake; well until Matt Culpin no-showed and with the prospect of a nice day I was looking forward to a day practicing my silvers fishing. Cometh the draw and I drew 23. I had not fished any of the low 20’s before so it was an interesting prospect. Ninja Searle drew 21 and immediately declared he wouldn’t catch. I had Dick on my right and another silvers man, Dave ‘Tiverton’ Harvey on my left. I had decided that I wouldn’t fish too far out because the water is deep and at 2+2 it was about 7 foot. I had two nice margins which were about 3 foot deep. These were my 3 lines for the day and my bait was the humble caster and maggot with worm, soft pellet and paste in reserve. I had some nice sweet smelling crumb for attractor and a few micros.

Peg 23….

With the clocks going back we are now fishing 10 to 3 and at 10 I fed the 2+2 with a couple of balls of crumb and let it rest while I tried the margins. My right margin never produced a bite all day but the left immediately started offering bits. I also had a nice perch on for about 5 seconds before it said adios to my net. Next put in was taken by a very ugly little common of 2lb. I then went onto the 2+2 line and started getting a bites but only from small bits. It would take  a good 5mins to get a bite but there was nothing of any reasonable size. After a couple of hours swapping between out front and left margin, I then tried a shallow rig and immediately got rapid bites. Most of these were from very small bits but there was also the odd 3oz roach. At the 3:00 o’clock horn I reckoned I had about 3lb of bits plus the small carp. Well, the bits went 2lb 13oz and the carp 2lb 1oz. Not a good day at the office!!

Dave Harvey was fishing a similar line to me but managed to find a few better size skimmers and showed me how a good silvers man fishes, lol. He put 5lb 2oz on the scales; still not setting the world on fire!! Dick on my right had one small skimmer as did Eric on 21. Both of them DNW. A highlight of the day was that man Fletcher, again. He obviously hooked into a vermin and proceed to play it for 30 mins before getting any sight. When it finally gave up George had the tricky task of getting a large foul hooked carp into the fishery sized landing net. George weighed the fish immediately before returning it. It went 20lb 5oz, well done George!!

George and his latest girlfriend……….

I could see Brian on peg 31 catching regularly and so was Steve Meakin on 34 but other than that I didn’t hear/see much excitement. Eric got up for a walk and I told him to report back. He came and said that a ‘lad’ on 27 had a good net full. The lad being Martin Western!! Rob Eagles did a good job of trying to match Georges carp with a 20lb 4oz specimen.

At the weigh in it was the three guys I mentioned previously who took the honours with a following pack in the 30’s and 20’s  range. The silver weights were poor overall with Chair Bob showing us all how it is done with a hard won weight of 8lb 9oz. Again we think the sharp frost dented their interest in feeding.

The days winners were,

Overall

1^st Martin Western (27) – 71lb 5oz

2^nd Brian Chivers (31) – 64lb 7oz

3^rd Steve Meakin (34) – 58lb 10oz

Silvers

1^st Bob Pascoe (37) – 8lb 9oz

2^nd Dave Harvey (24) – 5lb 2oz

3^rd Mike Davis (32) – 4lb 3oz

Also, Tony asked me to mention that he beat Phil (again) for the £.

Score sheet…..