Orchard Lakes 25/03/12

A trip to bagging venue Orchard lakes was next for me, with the spell of settled warm weather, albeit with frosty mornings, hopefully a big weight was on the cards. Fishing against some of the regulars is a challenge, as they allow some interesting methods at Orchard, plus they know all the up to date info. I pulled out peg 19 out of the draw bucket, not the best as 18 is better as it is sort of in the top corner and has more features. I decided to keep it simple, 2 lines, and a throw away one. A Line tight across at 14.5m, 0.14 rig to yellow hollow, a top 2 line down to my right, they can come very close and you need this line to work for the big weights. 0.16 rig to green hollow. And the throw away line at 5m, down the track.
I was hoping to get them going on the close margin line, but with the overnight frost I had feeling this might be a bit slow to begin with. I had plenty of meat cubed up, and a load of pellet and that was it! Nice and simple! At the all in I cupped a big pot of pellet on the 5m line line and started to loose feed the close swim meat and pellet. I started off across with meat on the hook and feeding through a toss pot, instantly rewarded with a few nice size fish. I was constantly feeding the close swim, meat and pellets every few seconds, hoping to switch them on. You do get through the bait though!
I did have a look every 20 minutes or so, but despite catching the odd one in the margins they had not "switched on" yet. So I carried on across, catching steadily, and regularly feeding the close line. I had a quick look on the 5m line, but nothing doing so I binned it to concentrate on the close line. It took 3 hours before I got them going properly on the close line, which was just in time, as the chap to my left was now catching a lot faster than I was across. Up to the 3 hour mark I had had 40 fish for about 40lb. Now the close line had come to life my catch rate had gone up and it was a case of catch and feed. I cut out the pellet and just fed meat.
The last 2 hours was very busy, a constant stream of fish, a mixture of sizes ranging from a few ounces to 4lb. I never really slowed until the last ten minutes, by this time I was knackered anyway! I had got through a lot of bait but felt things had gone well, at the scales I weighed in 138lb 06oz. My best weight at Orchard, giving me 5th overall and just missing out on the section by 2oz! A good day out, tiring but enjoyable none the less, but I couldn't fish it every week like some of them do, it's nice to bag up now and again, but it does make your arm ache!