Oaks Thursday Open 2nd August

After a good result at the weekend I was hoping to make the most of a rare midweek match by putting a few in the net. I think the main reason why I don’t seem to put decent weights together on Cedar normally is because of the amount of people fishing. Normally on our club matches on here there’s over 40 anglers on the lake with a few clubs fishing at the same time. Hopefully this midweeker with only 17 on the 80 peg lake, I’d be able to beat my personal best of 56lb. The draw got underway and peg 26 stuck to my hand. I wasn’t too bothered where I was to be honest because on looking through the past results, a decent weight is doable from most pegs. I had Whaley to my right on peg 28 and couldn’t see anyone else, but if I could keep pace with him, I’d probably be doing OK as he frames fairly often. I planned on two main swims today, the deep water at around 10-11m and a shallow line to my right. I also set up rigs for my right margin and the mudline but hoped I wouldn’t need them. My three main rigs were on 0.16 mainline with 0.12 banded hair rigs and size 18 hook and doubled 5 elastic. I had a 0.4g pencil for the deep and used 0.2g dibbers on my shallow rigs which were set at 10inch and 18inch. Bait today I had some casters, a few worms, some 4mm feed pellets and some 6mm pellets for the band. At the all in I pulted a full pouch of caster onto my shallow line to get it going, I’d then feed half a dozen casters here for the first 90 minutes to two hours depending on how it was going. I shipped out to my deep line with a 6mm pellet and tipped a few 4mm’s over the top. I didn’t have to wait long for my first bite and soon had an F1 in the net. I kept on with this and although it wasn’t frantic I was catching a few. After 90 minutes I’d had 12 fish, which was OK but Whaley was catching fairly well and Adam was catching very well on peg 31 by all accounts so I needed to up my game. I pulted a few full pouches of casters onto my shallow and then dropped in the middle of it. I had a few nuisance silvers at first but eventually had an F1. Rather than getting bogged down with the caster I decided to change over to feeding pellet sooner rather later because I knew I’d just get annoyed catching roach and rudd all afternoon. I was soon into a decent rhythm catching an F1 every put in. If it went slow I’d fire a full pouch in, which seemed to draw another ball of fish into the area. At one point it went almost dead so I dropped my full depth rig in over my shallow line and managed two fish off the deck whilst continually spraying pellets at my float in order to drag them back up in the water again. This did the trick and for the rest of the match I caught fairly well again although I did throw an F1 straight back in the lake! I even dobbed a lump off the top by near enough dropping my pellet in its mouth, this was the only decent fish I had at around 7lb and was most welcome, though it took a while to get in on the light elastic. By the end of the match I knew I’d beaten my old personal best but by how much? Catching in spells made it difficult to keep track on what I’d caught but reckoned I should have somewhere around 70lb. Following the weigh in round there were a few ton up weights before we got to my peg so it was all about beating my PB today. My first net weighed 44-12 and my second net 47-00, so I’d smashed it with a total of 91-12. Whether it’s down to the lack of angling pressure or a few tips I’d picked up the week before I’m not sure but I’ve finally managed a big weight on Cedar (by my standards anyway). The weights really show how good this fishery is, my 91lb was only good enough for 9th! With Gaz Malham winning with 158lb and Adam Richards coming second with 148lb. Unfortunately though, Delboy Brady beat me today, taking the bragging rights north across the border. His 30lb guesstimate actually weighed 92-06. He’d beaten me by 10oz!!!! The difference was probably the fish I threw back!!