Match Fishing-Scene

 

I'm down at Todber Manor fishery in Dorset for my second outing of the weekend

The trusty Tom-tom estimated 2hours 6mins but I was sure I could knock a couple of mins off that

After my good day yesterday at Makins I was hoping for an even better day today as Todber Manor is supposed to be a big weight water

I was up at silly-O-clock , had the car loaded and was soon winging my way down south to Dorset

I pulled into the car park at just gone 8.30 I was the second 1 to arrive as Mark Poppleton was there already

Getting out of the car the first thing I noticed was how cold it was compared to yesterday in fact before I went for a walk round the lake with Mark I had to go back to the car to get my coat

1 thing I noticed walking round the lake was how wet and soft the ground was in fact it was almost boggy in places . Mark pointed out the good pegs and bad pegs as we went round the lake always a bad thing for me as the bad pegs tend to stay in my mind and somehow end up in my hand at the draw

But today was a bit different as Mark had told me the peg he really wanted today was peg 38 and it was a good peg and guess what I came away from the draw bag with peg 38

Hmmm! if I draw a good peg it's bound to end in tears

I soon had the gear loaded onto the shuttle and set off round the lake to peg 38 I stopped on the way to collect 2 keep nets from the trailer (as the fishery supply keep nets)

The information I had managed to gather about Park lake was that you could catch fish from anywhere in the peg and on any bait but the best bet is to fish long to the island

Peg 38 looked ok

It was on the point of the island and the last peg on the far bank before the dogleg round to peg 1

Peg 1 had won the match yesterday with just over 100lb so those that had drawn down the dogleg were feeling confident

My plan today is to fish across to the island which is 14.5m

And fish in tight to the grass

I also plumbed up a line out in front at 6m

And a margin swim down the right hand margin

For bait I had the remainder of my corn and meat from yesterday my usual selection of soft hooker pellets and some 4mm feed pellets

On the whistle I shipped a pot of pellets across to the island another out to 6m and a pot of corn and meat down to the margin swim

Then went across to the island swim with a 6mm soft hooker pellet on the hook

I could hear a few people moaning about being pestered by F1's which are supposed to be a real nuisance in Park lake but my float sat motionless

A swap to a grain of corn on the hook brought a bit of movement on the float but still no fish

Mark next door on peg 37 was catching a few fish on paste tight across to the island

I put a kinder pot on the kit and shipped back across with 3 grains of corn in the cup dropped the rig in and tipped the corn over the top and waited suddenly the float buried and my elastic was streaming out I started to ship back in but just as I got the fish to the middle the hook pulled and it was off

Still undeterred on with another grain of corn and back out to 14.5m with another 3 grains in the cup and after a bit of lifting and dropping the float buried again this time I managed to slide the net under a Carp of about 1lb and was off the mark at last

From then on it turned into a really frustrating day with missed bites and foul hooked fish and bumped fish

I was getting the odd fish in the net but as soon as I caught a fish the rest just disappeared and it took ages for them to come back and even then they didn't seem to want to settle

I gave the margin swim a try but all I could catch from there were a couple of Roach

So I tried the 6m swim and I seemed to have a better run of fish from that swim although they were still only around the 1lb mark which is a bit strange as I was assuming that the fish would be a decent size going by the weights that are recorded for the lake but the biggest fish I had all day was only around the 2lb stamp

Mark next door was still catching well and I reckoned that he had doubled my weight

I sat it out on the 6m line picking off the odd fish and by the time the whistle went I thought I had somewhere between 25 - 30lb

When the scales arrived I was surprised to find I had 42lb 6ozs and was leading until the scales went next door to Marks peg where he weighed in 82lb and robbed me of the lead

I packed my gear away and pushed it round to the car talking to people on the way round the lake it appeared that it had fished hard all round and the weights were low compared to usual

With a long drive home ahead of me I didn't wait for the results and set off for home

The match was won by Munter hunter with a fine 115lb from peg 26  and second was Mark Blake with 100lb from peg 3 down the dogleg

I came 18th with my 42lb not the sort of result I was looking for but to be honest I did enjoy the day it's certainly a nice place although a tad windy and I caught a few fish so not too bad

I've learnt a few things that should help when I return for another match at Todber next month

Big thanks to Nick for running the match