Welcome tonic

Today was the last match in the teams of 3 at Rolfs and I was in A section which on paper is probably the worst section on paper, and was not really the tonic I needed after Whiteacres. I desperately wanted to avoid Pegs 38 and 40 in this section as I would consider these the worst pegs. Fingers and legs crossed I managed to avoid them, quite unlike me as normally draw the pegs I want to avoid. When I come to draw peg 34 which is the plum peg was still in the bag but I managed to avoid this and pulled out Peg 8.

Peg 8 is the peg that joins the big lake with the small lake at Rolfs, and it can throw up big weights during the height of summer and is the only peg at Rolfs where you can fish to the far bank with a 16m pole. I decided to fish two lines, nothing complicated today, one against the far bank and one at 6 sections to my left against the overhanging bush in the water. Depth wise against the far bank, I had 2ft of water, so I opted for a MW slim power 0.2g, purple hydro, 0.17 mainline through to a 0.16 hooklength and a size 16 Tubertini 175. For the line against the bush I decided to fish with red hydro and a slightly heavier float as I had about 4ft of water here. Baitwise I had one tin of punched meat, tin of corn and 12 pints of 6mm pellet though I didn’t intend to feed it all.

On the all in I put a full pot of pellet with a few grains of corn in on each line and went straight out on the long line with some punched meat. I was in straight away and over the next hour I added another 3 fish. The swim died so I topped up with another pot full of pellet and corn and tried my swim down to my left. First put in I had one which snapped me far to easily so I tied a new rig on 0.19 and this promptly landed me another 2 fish but this line then died so I refed it with more pellet. In the time I had been fishing this line, I had hoped that the fish would of moved back onto the long line but I was biteless. I was scratching my head now as this peg doesn’t have many options so  I decided to kinder pot it and fish it over the top with double corn. By pure coincidence, it was like someone had flicked a switch and I caught steadily for the rest of the match, recording 5 weighers and having about 12 in the net.

Overall I felt I had done ok and knew it was going to be close between me and Jon Walker on Peg 38 for the section. Most of the fish he had caught he had to weigh, and walking round to see him he had 125lb on the board with 2 of those fish being over 20lb each !!!!. I felt this was to good for me and so it proved as he weighed in 145lb and myself 126lb.

This was good enough for second in section and fourth overall,  so at least I  picked up a bit of money and with one of my other team mates finishing second in my section we finished 3rd overall on the day and 4th in the league.