I'd never fished covey 6 before now but as far as I was aware, it is very similar to Covey 5 where I had spent most of my winter so whilst the weather had warmed up and winter was nothing more than a distant nightmare, I will admit that my confidence was high for this match. Paul couldn't make it today so I was given the role of club secretary for the day.
My plan for the day was to keep things as simple as I could. In winter I would have gone for an all maggot approach but today I decided to go for pellet, opting to fish 50/50 mix of 2mm Skrill and JPellets, about 3 pints worth with half a pint of the same mix of 4mms. 2 pint of maggot in case the pellet plan didn't work and about half a pint of corn. That took me to my 6 pint limit. I also had a kilo of old ghost green algae groundbait.
I drew peg 158 which put me on the bank close to Holbar, just short of where the island with pegs on it ended.
Plan was to fish tight against the mud line with pellets, then have 2 short lines, one fed with maggots hoping to draw fish up in the water and the other off to one side with pellet again on the deck. I then set up 2 margin lines, I had empty pegs on both sides of me so I plumbed up lines in front of each platform which I would leave for the first half of the match and then feed with groundbait.
As I called the all in, I fed a small pot of pellets on my short pellet swim and went straight across to the mudline with a jpellets soft hooker on and a small cad pot filled with 2mm pellets. I didn't have to wait to long for my first bite and a small F1 was soon in the net but I did have to wait for my second, eventually I managed to put a small chub/ide in the net. This pattern continued for the first part of the day as I was catching slowly and generally getting F1s and chub alternatively. All the while I had been flicking maggots in by hand over the short swim and after seeing a few swirls I decided to put a small pot of pellets against the mudline and have a try for some shallow action and action I got!!! However, it wasn't the F1 action I had been hoping for and what came to the net was a run of really small silvers. I didn't pursue this line much longer, I was getting a bite a chuck but missing lots and the ones I hooked were always small silvers so I decided to switch on the deep pellet line and continue feeding maggots on the short line for another try later. Unfortunately, the deep line I had fed with pellets didn't seem to work and after a biteless 15 mins, I had another look on the mudline but before that, as it was around the halfway mark, I put a pot of gb on each of my margin lines, plus a few samples of corn. After a short wait the mudline sprang to life again but it was much the same as before, at least I was putting fish in the net though so I kept going with it for a while.
Rumour had spread that Carl was bagging down at the bottom end of the lake on peg 135, which was mixed news for me, obviously I wanted to win this match so news of someone else bagging isn't always great but as Carl had missed a few matches this year, he is not in contention for the league winner so thankfully, it wasn't one of my main rivals.
It wasn't long before my mudline slowed again so I decided to have another look on the shallow swim but a lack of action soon ended that, however, as the deep pellet swim didn't work, I tried my deep rig over the maggot line and managed to put a run of bigger chub, ide and skimmers together before yet again that seemed to die off. At this point I decided to try my margin lines, I'd already re-fed them with more groundbait by this point so I went straight over with a nugget of corn and crosse my fingers. Tentative indications were showing straight away but it took a while before my first proper bite, which resulted in a short fight before the fish took me round the platform and eventually snapped the hooklength. At least it was a sign of better fish so I put a small amount of feed in and switched sides but for some reason, the other side was dead and no signs or bites soon saw me switch back to the other side. I was soon catching better carp and despite losing a few I managed to boost my weight with about 3 or 4 better stamp carp. Time was eventually called and whilst I didn't do too bad, I felt the peg could have offered so much more. As I was packing up, I could help but think about how I seem to consistently struggle to keep fish coming and how any swim I catch on seems to die off really quick, defo one that I need to think about more carefully.
As we started to weigh in, I had to listen to the usual moaning from Angy and Jordy who were both trying every excuse under the sun to explain why they both recorded lower than average weights for themselves, of course I didn't mind too much as Angy is a main rival in the chase for top spot and to see him fall short of the mark filled me with optimism, as did league leader Alex's low weight. Fingers crossed mine would go better and as it got round to my peg I put 24lb 12 oz on the scales to double Alex's weight and even better against Angys, so i had managed to close the gap on them but Wayne had weighed in over 40lb so he was going to get a good points boost. As we continued it looked like the long straight was throwing up better weights with 2 weighs recorded over 50lb and another in the high 30's. Carl was second to last to weigh and he put 65lb on the scales to record a well earned victory. John Ruddy out another 40lb weight on the scales as I was seeing myself slip further down the board for today. Final tally put me in 8th place so not great but not bad, defo room for improvement but a disappointment from a water I expected myself to do better on.
In the car park, Jordy and Angy were still at it, moaning away so I used my new powers as club secretary for the day to ban them......you might say power has gone to my head but I rule with an iron fist!! No doubt they'll ignore me though and come back for the next match, luckily for them Paul will be back in charge.
So the leaderboard is not looking too different at the top with Alex still leading but Wayne's 5th place today has put him in second place, just one point adrift of Alex while I am now a few more points behind in 3rd place, of course we have the ability to drop our worse score so I am going to save that for the very end of the fixtures, for dramatic effect.
Next outing for me is sea fishing again on board Blue Mink, which I will report back on. Pem have a couple of weeks off while a few of the lads go to Ireland. I might see if I can sneak a cheeky bream session in while I have the time, I know Paul said something face timing some of the lads out there while we fished a local water, just so he could feel like he was there.
Tight lines!!
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