With the week off work I booked into the Mid-week open at Manor Farm Leisure. This week held on the island pool with 12 anglers fishing, so plenty of room.

With the weather mild for the end of October I planned a pellet attack as Manor is a renowned pellet venue. A strong wind ruled out the long pole so I set up just a short pole line, a 30g Preston ICS method feeder for throwing to the island and a Preston ICS 20g bomb for fishing half way across.

A slow start on all 3 lines!!

At the all in I fed my short pole line with some micro’s and 4mm pellets with the view to topping it up regularly while I fished my rods and to fish it later in the match. I started on the method throwing tight in the island but after an hour I’d had no pull rounds and I still had empty keep nets! Flyer peg 6 which had won the last two matches was into fish already. I was going no where!! 20 minutes next on bomb and pellet hadn’t produced anything either. So I was forced to look on the short pole line early. This was terrible. I just couldn’t present my pole rig right in the wind. Changing to a heavy rig also didn’t work. I was getting bites but seeing them was impossible. At this point 2 hours into the match with this howling wind straight in my face and with three empty keep nets I considered throwing in the towel, packing up and going home. But no! I work full time and I don’t get to fish these mid week matches. I threw the pole up the bank and decided to fish my rods until the end of the match.

Catching on the rods at last

During all this time I’d been feeding 8mm pellets half way across. I couldn’t fire out any 6mm’s because of the wind and at last my bomb rod baited with an 8mm pellet pulled around 3 times producing 3 small F1’s but I was still way behind the other anglers. They weren’t catching many carp. Some were fishing maggots and catching Skimmers and small F1’s and others were sitting it out for carp like me but not many were being caught. I needed some Carp and I decided to throw out the method feeder again. One good cast tight to the island made my rod arc round next. A large carp had finally picked up my 6mm chocolate orange wafter! and it was “fish on” I soon realised it was a big carp and the fight it gave me was fantastic. I needed to get this fish in and I took my time before I edged it into my landing net. It was around 12lb and I was back in the game. I cast out again and another smaller carp around 5lb soon followed before it went quiet again on the method but at least I now had something to weight in.

Bomb and Pellet comes good.

The last hour was good. the 8mm pellet line started to produce fish. mainly small F1’s but the odd carp also graced the landing net several times in this final golden hour. I’d caught most of the other anglers up and had now past them. Flyer peg 6 was still ahead of me though and hard to beat.

Come the end of the match I placed 55lb 14oz on the scales which was enough to end up 3rd overall. Considering the poor start I had and the weather conditions I was pretty pleased with the end result considering I nearly packed up at the half way point.