Alders Farm Tuesday Open 21 11 17

It feels strange to be going fishing with no real purpose, other than going fishing. I am attending the Alders Farm Tuesday Open and you may be saying to yourselves that surely I should be going there with the sole intention of winning it. There are 10 other anglers in attendance today, not many I know but some good ones amongst them. See the difference is I go match fishing because I enjoy it. I am NOT very good at it when you consider the quality of some of the anglers I fish against, but I enjoy it. I will make plenty of wrong decisions during the lead up to the match in bait selection, I will make numerous mistakes when I get to my peg and Christ knows how many during the 5 hour duration.I am competitive and want to do well but it is not the be all and end all. When I stop enjoying it I will stop going, but for now I enjoy it. We were chatting about this whilst waiting to draw and it was quite surprising how many agree with me.
Anyway on to today's match Pines Lake I draw peg 24, middle of the dam wall and a good peg, in fact I like all the pegs on Pines, they all have there days. The wind was blowing up over my shoulder towards the opposite end of the lake so at least I would be comfortable. I was the only one on the dam wall but had Ash Bunnage on 19 and Madd on peg 1.
I set up a couple of rigs to fish short 2+2, a light one and a heavier rig for fishing maggot. A deep rig for 11m, again for maggot. I also set up a long line at 11m to my right about 5m off the platform as I had around 3ft there. Bait was 4 and 6mm hookers pellets, fishery micros and 4mm for feeding plus 2 pints of maggot.
I started off fishing 2+2 on a light rig and did not get any bites in the first 20minutes. A switch to the heavier rig saw a couple of small dips but nothing hitable. A move to 11m saw a couple of liners so changed the depth slightly and the shotting on the rig to a more spread out rig. I still had a couple of liners and finally settled on the fact that the fish were higher up in the water than I originally thought. After 90 minutes I had not had a fish, but it was fishing hard, with only Lee Newson, Danny Wallace and John Light really catching well. Colin Kidd was stringing a few together on the opposite bank.
I then grabbed my shallow 3ft rig and went over the 11m line and started pinging a few maggots out, to my surprise the float dipped and my first carp was on and soon in the landing net. Out again and another 10 minutes passed before fish number two was joining his mate. Now lets get real, It is the back end of November and I am catching shallow. Imagine what Pete Archer would have been doing now. However as quickly as the bites came they disappeared. I came a section closer and nicked another smaller fish, added a section to 12.5m and had another one. I now had 4 carp.Nothing followed except the odd crayfish caught fishing on the deck at 11m, when I started getting a few liners, I just grabbed the shallow rig again and nicked a couple more.
Going into the last hour it was obvious that all the prizes were going elsewhere. But I still persevered and ended up with 9 carp and a couple of skimmers.

Overall

1st Danny Wallace peg 7 91-00

2nd Lee Newson peg 5   83-14

3rd Colin Kidd    Peg 17 60-07

My weight of 33-14 was well off the pace but I enjoyed it, I had to work for every fish and although I came nowhere, I stuck it out and learnt. I seem to be learning a lot at the moment, always too late to do any damage. But not one word of complaint, the guys who framed have all served their apprenticeships, can adapt and change that little bit quicker than me and deserve all their successes.

And tomorrow I can do it all again on another venue I have not fished for years, a rare day out to Oakfield Fishery near Aylesbury.