Sedges, Tile, 20 March (18 pegs)

Back to one of my favourite winter venues this week, Tile Lake at Sedges and with Will away sulking due to his inability to catch fish and Alan fishing a Frys series at Acorn I was reprising my role as match organiser for the day.
Nice and easy though with 18 fishing meaning the payouts would be 1st and 2nd overall, 2 silvers and 2 sections.
As ever Denise was on hand with tea and coffee and a stern  telling off for anyone foolish enough to put a wet spoon in the sugar bowl. And this week I had a lecture on the correct pronunciation of "aerator" as apparently "aereator" is a Bristolian made up word!
Come the draw and as per usual I kept the last ping pong ball for myself and that gave me peg 40!
Which will probably provide a bit of amusement for the cynical few that seem to think I only ever draw corners at Sedges, but anyway I was more than happy with that and I never had to run to it either as its the shortest walk on the lake. 

Keeping me entertained today was Ryan Radford on 39 and Brian Shanks on 38 and Steve Sewell (who has his name stitched on his waterproofs in case they get lost) was just about within piss-taking distance on 21

Sadly my travelling partner Derek had to go back home as a member of the family had passed away in the early hours of the morning so I re-jigged the sections a bit putting peg 30 into our section making 2 sections of 8 as Ryan wasn't in the pools (which was probably not the best decision he's made this year)!

Mark Radford, who was in 30, wasn't too concerned as for the second week running he was expecting a carpless day and to be honest I had to agree with him on that (it's certainly not a peg that I would run to)

Back to peg 40 and it's a peg I have drawn a few times now and it has loads of options.

I untangled the tip rod from last week at Viaduct (starting to sound like a "lead-slinger") which could be chucked to the island or along the left-hand bank, and set up a pole rig for 14m and a rig for down the edge in various places between 5m and 14m where I could find roughly the same depth (about 3½') which in places was tight to the edge but further down towards the corner was around a metre away from the edge.

Bait for the day was meat mixed with a bit of damp 3mm pellet plus a pint of dead reds that actually stayed dead this time so I'm guessing Derek's freezer kills them better than mine although he did phone me at 3:30 on Friday to ask if I wanted any bait from Scotts so they had got a bit longer to freeze than mine normally get!

Anyway, starting off I went out on the straight lead to the island with hair-rigged meat and straight away was getting little knocks and indications which I put down to roach or skimmers having a poke at the bait, then 5 minutes in I had a proper indication .... the rod bent through 90 degrees and line came off the reel, so probably not a skimmer, and I was correct as it was a carp of about 5lbs ... a nice start.

2 or 3 carp followed during the first hour and I seemed to be doing better than most.

Pete Uzzell in 31 had an early fish and Keith and Ron were getting odd ones up the same end of the lake, Ron fishing the shallow wag which was an interesting choice.

I could also see Steve Sewell catching on the tip opposite on 21 ... I knew it was him as he has his name embroidered on his waterproofs (I may have mentioned that earlier)

Ryan next door had started on bread on the tip but despite getting liners was having a bit of a "torrid time" hooking snags and loosing fish but he did get a nice big scale which was a bonus for him.

I got bored of waiting for the rod to rip round so had a look on the pole line which gave me a nice skimmer followed by a good sized carp (hooked in the wing) then went a bit quiet so I re-fed it and went back on the tip but this time chucked down the bank and that produced almost immediately.

Next chuck was one of those that you wished you'd caught on video as it landed within inches of the bank and went round instantly. Unfortunately, the fish instantly snagged me and that was the end of that rig.

Ryan meanwhile had switched to meat and had gotten his act together and was landing a few, but it soon went torrid again when he landed a "weigher". He was looking at it in the landing net and doing mental maths trying to work out whether to put it on the scales or not when the landing net collapsed and the fish returned itself to the lake and at the same time, the stray net handle landed on his pole and broke the no4 but I didn't laugh (honest)!

And it was just as well because I then completely mis-cast and sent the rig into a tree which put paid to the lead rod for the second and last time.

So back out on the pole and a quick look down the short edge with maggot produced no bites at all (odd) but out at 14m in front gave me a couple of carp.

But they weren't coming out as frequently as I would have liked and they certainly weren't coming out as frequently as they were next door as Ryan had gone into overdrive and his tip was going round every chuck and he was landing big fish as well.

Into the last hour and I had been joined by Mark Radford and Nick Saunders who had both surrendered and reckoned it was a 2 horse race between myself and Ryan as nobody else was catching except maybe Degsy Williams on 22.

A look down into the corner with meat gave me a fish straight away which was good news for Nick as he ate my chocolate bar while I was playing it.

Three more followed before the all out and I was kicking myself that I hadn't gone down there earlier but never mind.

As I suspected, Ryan's late charge was more than enough for him to take the honours with 88-5 (the catch and release incident would have easily took him over the 100lb mark),

My 74-14 was good for 2nd and top pools payout (thanks Ryan) and Degsy was 3rd with 56-14

Silvers went to Lee Waller with 15-6 of skimmers from peg 37.

Overall Result

1. Ryan Radford (39) 88-5

2. Steve Burgess (40) 74-14

3. Degsy Williams (22) 56-14

4. Brian Shanks (38) 49-6

5. Chris Gay (26) 41-9

6. Steve Sewell (21) 38-8

7. Ron Hardiman (33) 25-5

8. Keith Ray (32) 25-3

9. Adam Caswell (24) 23-12

10. Lee Waller (37) 19-15

11. Pete Uzzell (31) 13-9

12. Lionel Legge (29) 10-14

13. John Bradford (27) 4-3

14. Matt Taynton (28) 3-11

And 4 dnw's

Silvers:

1. Lee Waller 15-6

2. Keith Ray 7-0