Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Plantations, Coarse Lake, 15 Feb (17 pegs)

Seventeen were eventually booked in for this one which included some new faces and as a result I was fairly determined for there to be no draw cock-ups (not that we've had any for a while).

So, with my super-efficient head on I turned up armed with 4 variations of payout depending on wether or not we had any Larry Let-Downs.

Fortunately we never so it was version #2 which was top 4 overall and 2 silvers with 16 in the pools.

I did hear someone comment that Adam ought to pay Ryan's pools for him as he would win a lot more money that way but to be honest I thought that was a bit harsh.

I was expecting some good silvers weights today as (and I know I seem to say the same thing every week)

there are plenty of good sized skimmers in this lake but, having said that, The Gimp was fishing today which usually puts a hex on the silvers' fishing.

I left the pegging in the capable hands of Pete Sivell and his manservant Jason Bird who had both fished the Frys match here the previous weekend and were keen to make amends for their dismal performances and both were keen to have a £ with me which makes me wonder what Alan Healey had been telling them!

I think they made a good job of the pegging by putting less pegs at the far end of the lake as this end fished crap last week and it did so again this week although Pete ended up down the "good" end and still struggled which speaks for itself really.

Back to the draw then and Lee Williams decided to upset my Karma and pulled out the last two balls and gave me the choice.

I picked 11 which left Lee with 29 which is a nice peg on the far bank with plenty of options.

My peg was a different kettle of fish (sorry) tucked away in a bay towards the end of the carpark bank. It's saving grace was that Ryan Radford had won from it the last time we fished here, catching late down the left margin.

Self-confessed Plantations expert Chris Szakacs came over and reckoned it would be a case of fishing long into the open water for skimmers and then plunder the carp down the margins later in the match and this was backed up by the Plantations bailiff who recommended fishing long into the right margins.

For company today I had Mark Radford on 19 and Lee Waller over in the opposite corner on 23.

I also had a squirrel, which ended up on Mark's side tray eating his pellets

And a very persistent duck that kept coming up and pecking my boots to get more food.
It was quite amusing for a bit but after a dozen or so visits and much boot tapping it did start to get a bit annoying, especially when it decided it was going to get in my groundbait bucket!

Back to the fishing and I kicked things off by putting a couple of balls of groundbait laced with maggots, casters and micros out to a couple of spots at 13m and started over that with various combinations of live and dead maggots etc which gave no indications.

After an hour of nothing I finally started to get a few small skimmers averaging about 6oz but it was slow going and the bites were extremely finicky and it was just as well the lake was quite calm as if there had have been any ripple I wouldn't have seen any of the bites. But strangely most fish had taken the bait well down so maybe my rig wasn't set up quite right but never mind.

By halfway I guess I had about 4lbs of these but the grapevine reckoned the lower end of the lake was doing well with Chris Szakacs on peg 5 admitting to 10 or so carp.

Ryan also had a few and Alan had 3 or 4 from peg 1.

Lee and Mark had both had hardly anything and I wasn't aware of anyone else catching much in the way of silvers.

So I had a bit of a dilemma as to whether to try for carp down the edge and play catch-up or to carry on with the skimmers and hope for some better ones to turn up.

After 30 minutes of mucking about in the margins for nothing I decided to give it up and go for the skimmers.

But that didn't really happen either and after heaping in maybe a bit too much bait I had a 6lb carp and the highlight of my day, an 8oz tench!

The total of my efforts was 8-8 of skimmers plus the one carp for a total of 14-4 which was unfortunate really as I had quite a few fish but no quality.

Elsewhere the proper skimmers showed with Darren North doing best with 15-12 of them followed by Lionel Legge with 12-5 and The Gimp with 11-9.

The match was won by Chris with 56-14 followed by Lee Williams with 40-11

Newbie Julian Nurse took 3rd place with 37-5 from peg 4.

All three pegs were located on or near the smaller of the two islands so it seemed the fish were concentrated in that area.

Although Pete Sivell on peg 3 managed somehow to avoid them!

Full Result: