Category: Open Match

Eddie will add his report on the day later. Well done Jon, back in the banner again now…but for how long.

Welcome back to John Draper too.

Quality angler + super peg = King of the lake.

Today as i arrived at the lake i could not believe the amount of cruising carp in both the big and small lake and with the sun out and a temperature of 30 degrees you needed two things ,suntan lotion and a draw in the shade which i failed on both counts. Today also marked the return of Jon Walker who i had not seen for a while and when he drew peg 6 you could hear the groans from the other anglers 10 miles away, and with me on peg 7 a battering was definitley on the cards.

With the anglers scattered all around the lake the place you did not want to draw was on the motorway bank pegs 15.16.17 and 18 as it was like being in the dessert with no shade so the unlucky anglers to draw in this area were Mick Chappell on 16 and Paul Jay yes you guessed it was on peg 18. The story of the match was the anglers in the big lake struggled and the two anglers at the bottom of the small lake Dave Hulcoop on peg 4 and John Walker on peg 6 were picking up the odd fish but it was by no means hectic.

Both Micheal Corsini and myself on peg 8 and 7 were putting the catch and release policy into play as between the pair of us must of lost at least 30 fish as the fish would not feed properly and there were lots of foul hooked carp but the funniest was Micheal after playing a fish for 15 minutes got it to the net { and it was about 15lb } only to see it come off and swim off infront of his landing net how sad.

In first place today was big weight expert Jon Walker who was on peg 6 in the small lake and Jon experienced a very slow first 2 and a half hours. The remaining two and a half hours was a race against the clock as Jon put big fish after big fish on the scales and at one point had 6 fish for at least a hundred pound and at the end he had 286lb of fish to 18-08 on the board to go with his net fish. John started on the shallow 13 meter line fishing worm feeding pellet but at the same time was feeding a margin line at about 8 meters up towards peg 5 and as soon as John saw the fish swirling it was time to fish for them. Jon fished a small margin float on the deck fishing a big 11mm pellet hookbait feeding loose ground bait to keep the fish in the swim and my word there were lots of big carp in the swim.

This was the float Jon was using one of his new margin green range.

As the board weights were added up the anglers gathered were wondering if Jon had caught enough carp to dethrone Geoff Edwards as lake king with a bigger weight than 353lb and after 3 weighs Jons total weight went 356lb to reclaim the lake king he has held before { very well done Jon and thanks for giving me a sore neck witnessing all you fish }.

Just the smaller of Jons fish.

In second place was Dave Halcoop who was fishing end peg 4 also in the small lake and Dave fished down the edge in the shade to his right and by using pellet hookbait also managed to catch big carp to 17lb but i think Jon stopped the carp from going around the bush on peg 5 and after 5 hours put a weight of 156-12 which would normally win matches down the lake but not today { well done Dave}. Completing the frame was Paul Jay on peg 18 and today Paul fished the waggler all around at a depth of 15 inches fishing 8mm hard banded pellet feeding pellet but he caught a much smaller stamp of carp to 6lb but still ended up with 139-14.

Inform angler Dai Thomas .

Results

12 fished.

John has be hard at work making some new patterns of floats and here are some pictures of them.

Small JW margin and shallow floats.

More JW floats.

Thanks for reading John, Simon and Eddie.