By Matt | No Comments
Last updated: Thursday, June 5, 2008

The Sunday before last saw me fish the local open at Kiveton Waters, and what a windy one it turned out to be. I drew peg 25, which is right into the bottom corner, but the wind was blowing (HOWLING) that way and I thought I might catch a few fish from there.

The first thing that came out of the rod bag was my tip rod, as it looked like the pole might be a bit of a no-goer in the wind. However, I had some time to kill and decided to brave it and plumb a short line up. My feeder rig was the usual running rig, with a small groundbait feeder containing fishmeal, and a short 12inch hook link of 0.14 to an 18 PR28, which I planned to fish maggots on. The pole rig was a 0.6 Tamas Walter Carp series on 0.12 line o an 18 B911.

At the off I fed half a pot of 4mm pellets at 7m (4mm because of the tow) and started on the tip, casting as close to Stan’s pole on peg 26 as I dared, around 2m from the bank. After the first hour I had my first fish, a small carp, followed by a few skimmers.

No more fish followed, and Stan was complaining like mad about the wind. For some reason he put a hard hat on, I didn’t think my casting was that bad. I then clipped up a further 10yards out into the open water in-front of me. I had been kinder potting balls of micros in on the pole, but I didn’t fancy it yet, it was making some dodgy noises when I went to feed.

Had a run of 4 fish on the tip, but with an hour and a half left I had to try the pole. Pellet was out of the equation (a bit like Stan who had packed up by this point) so I laid a foot on the deck with a piece of worm and sat on it. In the last hour I managed three more small carp, but had a poor match all in all.

The scales registered just over 14lb in the end, and in hindsight, I wish had fished short with worms and casters to try and catch a bit of everything, there were definitely fish there- I MUST TRY HARDER!. Graham Dye won the match with 34lb on the tip with some cracking tench, Uncle Daz (the ginger one) finished a short 2nd with 32lb, on the pole and tip, with Sir Tom keeping in the frame with 29lb for 3rd. Anyway, we had a night out planned which was something to look forward too and it was off to Wetlands in the morning!