By Patrick | No Comments
Last updated: Saturday, August 15, 2009

Today been Wednesday meant it was my weekly jaunt to Theale Pits. Suprisingly there were only 10 of us booked in as most people were away on there summer holidays, so fingers crossed I would draw a decent number so I could get a decent peg as all matches at Theale are walk offs.

I didn’t dissappoint, I drew last, not quite what I wanted. Venue expert and drawbag drew second away, and plumped for peg 60, this peg is the in form peg and with Jon sat on it, we were all going to be fishing for second place, though Steve on peg 40 was likely to be his threat. Me, I had the option of peg 41, 43, 48 and 12. I didn’t fancy 41 or 43 as there were anglers on the next pegs, so opted for a peg with a bit of space, peg 12.

Peg 12 if you haven’t read my previous blogs, is a graveyard for my fishing tackle, fingers crossed we were going to avoid any disasters today though I couldn’t gurantee it. Peg 12 is a corner peg, you can fish the method to the gap in the trees on the far bank, a line shallow against the tree hanging in the water at 13 metres and a margin line 7 sections along the bank to my right in 18″ of water. From previous experience of fishing the method on this peg, it’s very snaggy, but to solve this problem you have to sit to the very left of the peg and cast almost under the trees on the far bank. I opted to fish all the lines I mentioned with the method tight across, pellet shallow, and pellet and paste on my margin line.

Rig wise on the method it was 10lb mainline, 0.21 hook length, and with me I had about 7kg of method mix. Baitwise for the hook I had some small pieces of red meat, corn, maggot and 8mm hard pellet and for my pole lines I had some 6mm pellet and skrettings pellet ground up to a fine powder which I make a sloppy paste from.

On the all in, I cupped a small pot of pellets and paste onto my margin line and started pinging about 6 pellets every 10 seconds on my 13 metre line with a view to catching shallow, then it was out on the method. I didn’t get a touch for the first half hour on the method, so decided to try my shallow line. I caught 2 pretty quick, but this was pretty much it despite altering my depth and feeding patterns.

Back on the feeder I had one straight away so I had 3 fish  going into the second hour though the second hour was worse as I failed to even get a bite. Also it’s difficult to judge how your doing as you can’t really see anyone else. Gradually they started to turn up on my method line, and I started to put a few fish together mainly on small pieces of meat but it wasn’t hectic. I decided to sack my shallow line and concentrate on the method and margin line but the margin line didn’t look like it was up to much as I failed to see any indications of fish present, therefore I had to fish the method to the end.

Come the all out I estimated I had 80lb, I actually weighed in 82lb, I wasn’t a million miles away from the frame from a poor draw with 108lb needed for second place. Jon on peg 60 walked the match with about 185lb, all caught on the method with the exception of one fish.

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