All of the anglers turned up apart from Dave Allen who broke down at the Nunney Catch roundabout. I hope the Little Chef breakfast was as good as ours, Dave. Hard luck, Mate. We also had an appearance of Santa's Little Helper from Bolton and there were no complaints.
We were using all three lakes, Sapphire, Ruby and Emerald. I had never fished this venue before but the lads said there were plenty of fish. The temperature had dropped 5 degrees over night and the morning greeted us with a fog. I think we were in for a day of hard, winter fishing. At the draw, I pulled out Sapphire 7 and looking at the pegging map I didn't have far to walk from my car.
Sapphire 7
There was about 3ft of water all over the swim. I had Rob Eagles on my right who was not happy with the small swim he had. I didn't have anyone to my left so I decided to fish predominantly on the left. I decided on 3 pole lines; one and two at 11m and 13m towards the Sapphire sign. The third was in the left hand margin. I also set up two tip rods to fish in the gap ahead of me. One rod with a simple lead and size 20 hook. The other was the same except with a banded hook. The rods saw minimal action with no bites so I won't say any more of them.
I decided to keep the baits simple with maggot and 4mm expanders on the hook and micros and groundbait for feed. At the all in I fed the 11m and margin line with a small ball of groundbait and the 13m line with a small offering of micros. I started on the 11m line and was surprised to get bites straight away from rudd and roach. I alternated this with the two other lines but didn't get a single bite on them all day. So, concentrating on the 11m line I continued to get bites but they had become finicky and hard to hit. Maggot was the better bait and feeding a few micros every put in, the rest of the day continued in the same vein. I did get bonuses of 3 small carp and a small tench. At the end of 5 hours my efforts gave me a total of 9lb 7oz.
During the day I could see that Baz Morgan on peg 1 was finishing strong after a blank couple of hours. Tony Fry on peg 3 had got a few carp which gave him 2nd on the lake. Paul Bowyer on peg 4 was catching a few along with specimen sized leaves. Chairman Bob was also having better luck with the leaves than fish. And Rob, next to me did manage to catch a few.
And so, after a pleasant day and company, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Tight lines for the future and don't forget the AGM on Friday 6th January at the 37 Club; 7:00 for 7:30 start.
The results for the 3 lakes are below, followed by some pics back at the prize giving.
Emerald
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