Partridge Lakes Sunday Open 19/7/2020.

Bad day from the off. Got to Partridge and realised I had left my butties in the fridge. Booked in and got drawn Covey 5 peg 107. Went up and got my bait, had a chat for 10 mins then went back down the lane and set up on Peg 105. Yep, don’t know what happened between drawing my peg and setting up on the wrong peg! I was just starting to plumb up when the lad who was drawn on 105 made me aware I was on the wrong peg, (2 Doh! moments). Moved all my kit round to the correct peg and really didn’t fancy it, no margin to speak of as it was overgrown, left and right, with rushes and they were sticking out into the water a good 4 foot. I noticed a ‘ding’ on my No 7 section, have no idea how that happened.

I wasn’t going to make it worse or suffer the section breaking so was limited to my length out (3). Rigging up my top sections with new rigs, made up after Monday’s coaching from Chris Weeder jnr. Realised I had left one of my hook boxes in my workshop this box had my 0.13, 0.16 and 0.19 hook lengths in, so I was limited to 0.11 #16 SWL for the match (4). Set up 3 lines:
1. 3m left edge, 10-12 elastic, 0.20 mainline, 0.11 hook length to #16 SWL. GORTINI 4×14 Margin float, feeding 50/50 Burt Baits X-pander/Tiger Nut Margin groundbait.
2. 9m track, shallow, 8-10 elastic, 0.16 mainline, 0.11 hook length to #16 SWL. GORTINI 4×10 chianti, 3 white maggot on the hook, feeding white maggot.
3. 5m track, hard pellet line, 8-10 elastic, 0.16 mainline, 0.11 hook length to #16 SWL. GORTINI 4×14 NiTi wire float. Burt Baits Sweet F1 hook and hair 4mm pellet, feeding Burt Baits 4mm Sweet F1 hard pellet soaked in Burt Baits Sweet F1 additive.
When plumbing up I just could not find any slope or hard bottom, it was all silt, this was going to mess with my hard pellet line for sure.
All In, started on the shallow line and had a nice F1 first chuck in, this was steady until I hit into a Carp, this took me a while to control as I knew my hook length wasn’t up to these angry Carp, this was a ~4lb and I got it to the net OK. I did have 6 that just swam off with my hook length and I knew my weight was going to suffer. Other than the big carp I managed to net 27 F1’s and a few Ide and big roach on this line. My edge line was dominated with carp and every pull here resulted in a snapped hook length! so I had to concentrate on my shallow line, which was at least productive. Hard pellet line only had 2 small F1 and was too long between bites to bother with for too long.
So a comedy of errors seen me with 54lb 15oz at the weigh in, pegs left and right weighing similar, plus or minus 10-20lb the difference being the Carp I lost.
After Monday’s coaching session with Chris Weeder jnr, the ~140lb nets, I was gee’d up for this match. Different lake, different peg, different day, oh well!