Rolfslake Wednesday Open 30th June 2010

Another Wednesday another midweek open for the usual suspects hoping to catch a big bag of hungry carp that Rolfslake is famous for.

On arriving at the lake today, the carpark was busy with the lake being shared by three groups the pleasure anglers that were fishing the small lake car park bank, the local angling club that were fishing pegs 19 to 32, and the match anglers that were fishing pegs 4 to 18 on the motorway bank. The day was warm with a cool breeze blowing from the north and fish could be seen cruising all around the lake which hopefully meant lots of fish but sometimes means a struggle for five hours.

With the draw having taken place the club and match anglers set off to their pegs except me as John Bennett who has been on a bad run fishing against me had got into my car and stole my paste and hid it in the woods {very funny John } on finding my paste bucket i put it outside the shed and after collecting my tackle from the car found the paste mix gone again {not so funny John}. After playing John’s game i went off to my most favourite peg on the lake peg 6 , and settled for a hopefully good days fishing as peg 6 has always been good to me.

The problem i had today was that with two matches on today and both starting at different times i lost all concept of time as the local club started 45 minutes before us and their hooter nearly got me starting and pacing up early.

As our match started within 2 minutes John Bennet was already off his box going to the weigh station with a double figure carp so we all were playing catch-up, and with Geoff Edwards on peg 8 i was looking at a battering from the pair of them, so concentration was the order of the day. The pleasure anglers opposite were happily catching lots of carp on the bomb fishing either corn ,pellet or meat fishing half way across so at least there were feeding fish around.

Todays winner Mick Jones with a new P.B 229-12

The winner today was Rolfslake regular Mick Jones who was fishing aquarium peg 4, and Mick had a very enjoyable match fishing his specially prepared meat hook bait and fishing at 6 metres range as he always does. You know when someone is really bagging as they start running to the weigh station after only two hours { this normally only happens in the last hour } so a big weight was on the cards. Mick fished two lines one to his right at three metres and one straight out at 6 metres and this was the line that he caught most of his fish at, and if it was not for a poor last hour Mick would of gone past the 300 barrier but had to settle for 229-12 and a new pesonal best {well done Mick}. In second place was me Eddie who for three hours was getting battered by both Mick and Geoff on peg 8 but a switch to the 2.5 metre line to my left fishing just down the slope brought me a very good run of fish.

Mick Lane popped down to see us today and pretty well stayed behind me for two hours as i caught a fish a cast on my now notorious X4 paste which was working great today. I had to stiffen up the paste as there were so many fish in the swim the swirling of their tails kept pulling the paste off the hook, so i mixed in some dry mix and i worked even better. I fed quite heavy to keep the fish there and after 5 hours caught 182-12 but should of been more as when the local club matches hooter sounded to end the match i thought that was our hooter so started to pack away but Mick said we still had 45 minutes, so interupted my flow. The peg was so solid Mick after the match had a go on my gear and in 5 minutes caught one and lost two carp on the paste.

Completing the frame was Geoff Edwards on peg 8 and after giving Geoff some advice on where to fish in the peg he ended up either playing tug of war with the fish in the bush to his left of catching smaller carp long across against the far bank grasses, but when he fished the first shelf down towards peg 7 his fishing improved so much he nearly caught me. Geoff caught on pellet and paste and had fish to double figures in his final weight of 172-08.

Top three results.

My score against John Bennet now stands at John 4   Eddie 7 in our season long battle.