By Joe | No Comments
Last updated: Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Well I hope my run of poor draws comes to an end soon or my White Acres trip in April could be a dull do!!!!! I decided another Woodlands double header was in store, after seeing the terrible forecast I felt sessay was out of the question as at least at Woodlands you can compete on a tip.

On the Saturday I drew skylark 10 which I was dead chuffed with as i’ve done well off the peg before, now the fish have been at one end or the other and after 1minute I thought they where in the middle. I literally chucked the bomb out and caught one immediately. It must have landed on a loners nose tho!!!!! I decided to fish the same as last week as I thought my methods where right but just needed to draw on the fish.

After 90 mins on the bomb with 2 carp and a tench for my efforts I knew I wasn’t gonna do much good. And my pole line wasn’t exactly solid neither, all I could muster on this was the odd skimmer and tench, and to make matters worse I could see andy dargue on peg 2 starting to empty it, I plodded tho in the strong side wind in search of a section prize and had a mid match extraction of 4 fish but that was the highlight and I weighed 23lb with 30lb winning the section by default.

Andy ended up with 108lb to win the match with peg 2 on partridge second with 98lb, it wasn’t a coincidence that, that end of the lake was calm so perhaps the fish was out of the biting northerly wind????

Not so super sunday!

On Sunday I woke up expecting loads of snow and it being bitter. Much to my surprise when the sun was shining without a breath of wind!!!! Although there had clearly been a hard frost. Ian was picking me up at 8.45 and id been up since 6.45 so had loads of time to get my bait ready, sort some brekkie out and watch a bit of Matt Hayes for a while, he was moaning about the weather being too warm!!!!!! I went outside and it was -2 lol!!!!!!

Anyway if met check was to be correct(it usually is) then the weather was going to deteriorate and I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but with 40 on a decent match was in store. I pulled peg 2 on wagtail, my 3rd corner in 5 visits ouch!!!! Ian drew peg 8 on wag with local expert darrell taylor drawing 14 on wagtail which is a flier(not like darrell then???) once again I had the cold wind on my peg and the other end was flat calm!!!!

I decided my only hope was some lumps down the side and maybe an odd fish in front of me or on the bomb although to be honest I didn’t expect much. I fed a 17.5 m line to the boards a 10m margin swim and a 13m pole swim in front of me, all fed with 4mm pellets and corn. Well after 4 ½ hours id managed 3 tiny skimmers and it was snowing like mad and I couldn’t feel my hands it was that cold, so I thought for one last throw of the dice chuck the bomb down the edge so I could pack my pole away, my bomb must have been in less than a minute and it flew off the rest a brief tussle and a landed a 10lber, now I knew darrell had bagged but I couldn’t see anyone else catching a deal so thought a default lake win could be on the cards if I could tempt 2 more bites. Anyway I had one more bite and it was an 8lber and I weighed 18lb with 20lb taking the lake win!!!!! If only id have fished maggot for some silvers!!!!!

Darrell won the match with 71lb with Phil Sellars second with 64lb from kestrel lake, I think the weather had really knocked the fishing. The venue is itching to fish but its just not getting chance too with the up and downs in the weather.

Anyway my White Acres prep is nearly done with hundreds of hooks tied and tons of rigs made, I really feel up for it this year. Last years festival was my first trip and I learnt an awful lot as to what is required so I am definitely itching to get down there, im stopping with Lee Kerry and Ben Fisk so the caravan will be like a draw bags convention (myself not included of course!!!) with about a dozen of us in total going so im sure we will have a great time and hopefully catch a few fish in the process.