Another Wednesday another Rolfs lake bagging session, and as the anglers waited for the draw to commence it was nice to see two of Rolfslake’s top anglers return to the open scene in Jeff Edwards and Ginger aka Micheal Jones.

Normally when Jeff and i am at the lake we normally draw next to each other and today was no different, because i drew peg 26 on the car park bank and Jeff drew peg 24  and as i was waiting for my regular beating from him or was i going to prove to him that my fishing was improving. As for the rest of the anglers John Bennett had drawn flyer peg 18 in the corner, Ginger had drawn peg 13 in the bay and the Judge had drawn peg 32 by the hut with the rest of the anglers scattered around the lake.

With the day starting off sunny with a brisk breeze blowing from the south with a possibility of rain ,the anglers set off to their pegs in hope that the recent good weather would kick start the fish into feeding well, but as they know the sun does not always mean good fishing ,but would today be any different ?. With the match start time being 2pm these midweek matches normally take a while to get going and today for most anglers this was the case except for John on 18 and Ginger on peg 13 who were into fish quite quickly and started to pull away from the rest. After about two hours around the lake i could see more anglers starting to catch carp from all pegs with the motorway bank providing most of the action, but after the third hour it was as if someone turned on a switch as all the car park swims came to life because at one point i could see 5 anglers playing carp at the same time which included me for a change. As the match reached the final hour the carp were really switched on as everyone started catching and i could see the results being really close as there were more and more anglers running up to the scales to weigh their fish {all fish over 10lb have to be weighed straight away} which normally means they are bagging.

Todays winner and just ahead of the chasing pack was the Midlands maestro Ginger on peg 13 who put on a real good demonstration of catching long down the edge {16 metres down to peg 12} and short range fishing to his right. Ginger was fishing the banded pellet fished on the deck on both lines but when the wind died down and the sun was out he had to fish the long line due to the sun being in his eyes. As the match went on he was able to catch to the first bush to right and was rewarded with fish to 15-12 in his final weight of 229-12 {well done Ginger it was nice to see you back }. In second place was my nemesis Jeff Edwards who was slow at catching fish on the long pole but a change to the 7 metre line fished with paste brought his swim to life and towards the end was flying catching fish to 13lb in his final weight of 199-04 and just one small skimmer off the double ton [thanks for another beating Jeff and welcome back}. Completing the frame was Rolfslake owner John Bennett who has been stuck on peg 18 for a few weeks and today made all that knowledge count as he fished at a range of 5 metres straight out in front, fishing on the deck and using paste as hook bait but feeding quite a lot of bait to keep the fish there. As is usual on this peg at about 5 o’clock as the sun goes down it beams straight into you eyes and this slowed the fishing down for John as he could not see his float { i felt sorry for him } and this stopped him also weighing the double ton as he weighed 188-12.

As for me i had another of those days as i had forget not only my X4 paste ,i also had lost my cap so i had to wear my bandana so as not to burn my head like last week, much to the amusement of the other anglers as they kept calling shiver me timbers and where’s me parrot and your going to walk the plank which was a bit much after 5 hours.

I started off on the 6 metre line with lots of foul hooked fish and lots of bubbles fizzing from the swim but no fish for the net. I was also feeding heavy the edge swim to my left to try and bring a few fish closer for later on in the match. With no X4 paste to fish with i made a batch down on the lake which just did not work very well and also with a damaged number 4 section on my pole i was rushing everything and spoiling what should of been a good day. As Malc on 28 Jeff on 24 were giving me a thrashing i was wondereing what to do next just as my float burried and another fish was heading for the snags which eventually broke my float and rig. On searching in my bag for another float i could not believe my eyes as my X4 paste was at the bottom of the bag ,so with a new rig on and the paste i went down the edge and in the last two hours  was rewarded with big fish to 18-08lb and lots of good bites. My only motivation was to try and catch up with John on 18 as he was about 70lb in front of me and after 5 hours i was just 5-12 short with my weight of 183-00, but a very enjoyable end to the match.

The score against me and John is           John 3 – Eddie 1 roll on next week.

Place	Angler	Peg	Weight	Bait
1st	Ginger	13	229-12	Banded Pellet	Smithys
2nd	Jeff Edwards	24	199-04	Paste	Bio Fuel
3rd	John Bennett	18 {flyer}	188-12	Paste	Rolfslake
4th	Eddie Taylor-Green	26	183-00	X4 Paste	Rolfslake / Walker Floats
5th	Malc Doyle	28	147-14	Pellet	Jinx League
6th	Russ	9	127-08	Pellet	Rolfslake
7th	Dai Thomas	16	104-02	Pellet	Jinx League
8th	Mike Stimpson	32	100-04	Pellet	Rolfslake
9th	Paul Jay	14	76-08	Banded Pellet	Rolfslake

3 New peg kings after this match.

Ginger     13     229-12
John Bennett     18      188-12
Mike Stimpson     32     100-04

Well done.

The lake is fishing well at the moment with pellet and banded pellet catching good bags of fish, and although paste is still a bit too early for the fish there are still bags to 200lb to be caught.