Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Trinity 27 March / Harescombe 03 April

I'm not going to dwell on the Trinity match too much as only 6 of us turned out and although I was really hoping that with being spread out along the back bank with a breeze blowing into us we'd have some decent weights, unfortunately it wasn't to be.

In fact it was one of the hardest matches I've fished for a long while as for whatever reason the lake just switched off completely.

I did manage to get a nice picture though

I drew peg 8 and set up rigs for meat at 11m and down the margins.

After feeding all lines I went straight down the edge and caught a 7lb fish within 5 minutes and that, apart from one line bite and a few dinks on the float, was it for the day!

Winner on the day was Simon Belcham with 15-14 consisting of 3 carp plus 5lbs of whitebait caught mainly in the edge on maggot.

Matt Challenger was 2nd with an all-skimmers net of 10-11 and my solitary carp was good enough for 3rd!

Pictured below are the winner and default silvers winner (Rocket Ron) with their bonus prizes.

Onwards and upwards then (up the M5) to this week and Harescombe where hopefully this time round a few fish would be caught.
Thirteen fishing today so lots of room and that included a guest, Shane Caswell, who inevitably got lost and for the third week in a row I was running the show which is always good news as it meant I had time to fine tune some rigs with it being a 10:15 start.
I kept the last peg for Shane and pulled out the second from last one for myself.
That gave me peg 6 and 22 for the straggler so won't be doing that again as peg 6 is a bit of a bum draw whereas 22 can be a flyer.
Not to worry as fish have fins etc etc and I set up a banded pellet rig for across on top of the shelf, a rig for meat at top kit +2 out in front and a rig for both edges to fish maggot.
For company I had Derek on 4 and Steve oToole on 8 so a quiet day then!!
On the off I dumped a big pot of meat / pellet on the 2+2 line, fed some maggot down both edges and went across with a banded 6mm over 4mm's and very soon hooked and lost my first F1 and after about 15 minutes it was 3-0 to the F1's before I gave that up in anger and frustration and tried the other lines.
The left margin, despite heavy doses of maggot feed was only any good for "eyes", the right margin produced nothing at all and, apart from one missed sailaway, the 2+2 line was also devoid of action .... not the best of starts but I wasn't alone as Steve oToole was having a similar struggle and Derek was happy catching "eyes"....

Not everyone was in the same boat though, Degsy Williams (yes, he has his name on his jacket too) opposite me on 24 was doing ok despite suffering losses and the wind-assisted pegs towards the bottom of the lake, 10-18, were all catching as well.
By the midway mark I had worked out that by feeding pellet across and fishing meat in the band I could hook and lose more F1's than with a banded pellet alone and, better still, shallowing up and slowly lifting and dropping the rig would add to the excitement of hooking and losing even more of the frustrating little ****s
However Mr oToole's regular heavy doses of loosefeed on his short lines were starting to pay off and after a very slow first half he went into overdrive and later in the match was catching F1's every put in on meat.

No such change of fortune for me unfortunately but Steve had given me a proper battering eventually winning the match with 83-4