Cottage Lake, Witherington farm.

Team duties for a round of the teams of 4 at Witherington Farm. This time I was on Cottage, one of the lakes, at least it makes a change from the snake! I was hoping for an island draw, so I could get the chance of using a rod, but got drawn out peg 7, an all out pole swim! Peg 7 is a nice corner peg, with a nice cut out at 14.5m in the margins. Keith had fished the peg in a match the week before, so armed with his info I headed to my peg.

Arriving at my peg, the first job was to clear out the floating weed that had gathered in the cut out in the corner, a couple of nets round and it was done. I needed to do this as I had a feeling I would be spending quite a lot of the match in there! Three lines were set up, the obvious in the corner, one at 5m in front of me and a third at 13m. I set two rigs up in the corner, one at the bottom of the slope, and one a foot deep, up the slope, Keith said he'd had a few catching up the slope, so I set up a small dibber type float on 0.16 straight through to a 16 hook to green hollow to cover this. The second rig was set up for the bottom of the slope in the corner, and whilst plumbing up I had a couple of line bites with the plummet on, a good sign and an instant decision was made that I wouldn't dump a pot full of bait in there and that I would feel my way in. It was a similar line and elastic to the shallower rig, just a small 4x12 bodied float, as I had 2 1/2 ft of water at the bottom of the slope. An 0.12 to 0.10 rig was set up for the other two lines as I had the same depth, this was married to a nice soft set yellow hollow.

I had a mixture of dampened micros and 4mm pellets, and some meat cubed up, as well as corn and some expanders. At the all in I cupped in half a pot of 4mm/micro mix with a few cubes of meat on the 5m and the 13m line, and went straight into the margin line. I slipped a piece of meat onto the deeper margin rig and lowered it into the corner, after a few minutes the float buried and i was attached to a very angry carp, it gave me a quite a tussle before slipping the net under it. Just in the nick of time too as my 911 hook was virtually straight and could of slipped it's hold any second! A good 8lb fish and a nice start. I went in again this time with a few pieces of meat in the toss pot, I just felt it would be wrong to dump bait in there and decided just to toss pot bait in. A couple of smaller carp followed before the bites slowed in the corner. I decided to leave the corner for a bit and had a look on the other lines, one small carp on the 13m line was the result. That fish was all I had on that line all day, despite topping it up regularly. I did have a few skimmers on the 5m line, but I was having to work and wait for a bite. Other anglers around me were catching skimmers and silvers a lot quicker than I was.

Swapping back to the corner swim and a couple of nice carp was the result, it went a bit slow so I switched to the shallower rig. This had the desired affect and the next bite resulted in the pole being slammed round as a good size carp grabbed my meat hookbait. A few more followed before it slowed again. Keith's info had helped put a few more fish in the net. Swapping to the 5m line again resulted in only a couple more skimmers, they didn't seem to want to settle properly, and were away from the corner. The last hour was very slow for me, the carp had deserted me from the corner, and the skimmers weren't playing ball. At the all out I felt I had done ok and I still felt I had done enough to beat the anglers around me. I weighed in 52lb 14oz, beating all around me and good enough for 3rd on the lake, and a small pick up which is always nice! The team had a good day, and are catching up the leaders. Ive had a busy few days since the above match, prepping all my gear for a fishomania match at Viaduct and a White Acres festival, hopefully the drawing gods will be with me and I'll get a few half decent swims, if not I will have to drown my sorrows in the bar!!