Tuesday 18 April 2017

Alders Farm Ash Lake 180417

Someone told me today that they were going through a crisis of confidence at the moment, I thought about it for a little while and after the initial mickey taking, I thought do you know what I could be too. Everything I am doing at the moment, fishing wise, does not seem to be working together.
Today, was the Tuesday Cost-cutter on Ash Lake at Alders Farm. I have not fished it for a few weeks but have noticed that pegs 1, 2, 12, 20 and 30 were fishing well. Having transported my gear down the hill to the cafe and sitting outside on the patio, I was asked where I would like to fish, any peg on the dam wall was the answer, the reason was the wind was blowing towards that end of the lake and I wanted to fish corn in the deeper water at 2+2 and later down the edges. I really fancied the corn getting plenty of bites today. I was confident. Mick and Vic were both in attendance today so as per usual I had my MK Nugget at stake with Mick. Mick goes in first and pulls out peg 20. I follow him into the box and peg 2 sticks to my hand. A good peg, but a little too shallow for what I wanted to do today, I did have pellet with me but really only wanted to use it as feed and not fish it. Vic had drawn another good peg, 12, wind blowing in and some form. Jim had drawn peg 30 with Dennis on peg 1. I had Ken and Matt Kearns on pegs 3 and 4 with the Lancaster Brothers on 6 and 7. Trevor had drawn 23 Paul on 21, Steve Wroe on 18 and Madd on 10.
I planned to fish the corn today, so set up a 2+2 line in the shallow water and would feed by hand but did not expect to catch there regularly. I had another corn line at 11m in the slightly deeper water and planned to fish 11m towards the reed bed at 2 O'clock and another line at 9m into the reed bed at 3 O'clock.
Starting off at 11m I had a small carp around 1lb first put in and another couple in the first half hour but I was also getting liners. I shallowed up a couple of inches to come off deck and nicked another couple of fish before it slowed. I re-fed the line with corn and a few pellets to try to get the fish back on the deck. I went to the 9m line line next to the reeds and had a short spell of fish which even with black hydro could not stop fish going into the reed bed. A look at 11m to the edge of the reeds saw a few more fish but I was losing more than landing them. I was either foul hooking them or the hook was pulling out as I was shipping back. I reckoned I had lost more at the half way stage than caught. I changed the elastics over, adjusted depths, I just could not get it right. It did not seem to make any difference. I changed hook pattern switching from a Kaizen to a B911f1 hook to see if this made a difference, all to no avail. I could hook them but not land them.
Ken next door was also struggling, picking off odd fish, mostly on the feeder, Matt was getting a few fish at 6m whilst I could see Jim catching well throughout. My crisis of confidence was taking effect. I had enough fish on the hook to compete yet, would have little to show for it at the end of the match. And to make matters worse I could see Mick catching late on down the edge.
After a frustrating five hours, it was my turn to weigh in. 63lb for nowhere. A good peg wasted.
1st Trevor Price 150-11
2nd Charlie Lancaster 141-00
3rd Vic Nugent 107-06
4th Jim Stubbings 99-09
5th Terry Lancaster 83-00
6th Matt Kearns 75-02
Mick took another nugget off me to make it 6-1 and I need to sort my crisis out quickly before I set up a direct debit. Tomorrow another pleasure day at Meadowlands before Vic goes in for surgery on his knee.

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