MFS - Larford Lash Up, 16th September 2011

Larford Match Lake
Said in a Big Brother voiceover, "Day One at the MFS Larford Lash-up"...

Well actually it may have been Day One, but that was followed by night one, Thursday night out with a small group of MFS'ers in the Robin Hood, Droitwich.

I followed Animal and Colin (BNF) to Larford Lakes.  On arrival we met up with Andy Kinder and his lovely wife, Sarah.  Both the match lake and the specimen lake water levels were quite low and today we would be fishing the match lake.

The match lake has two sides, the burr bank, which is the man made bank between the match and specimen lakes and what was referred to as the shallow bank.  The bur bank pegs had deeper water, the shallow bank turned out to be very shallow, 18inches of depth at 13metres...

Walking round the match lake before the draw there were fish very close in, their backs out of the water, plenty topping, in fact it looked stuffed with fish and not just small fish.

The draw arrived and the mottley crew of MFS'ers formed an orderly queue, which is quite a rare sight ;-)  My hand went into the bowl and I drew out permanent peg 13, which was mid way along the shallow bank and next to the peg that won the £50,000 Maver Match This competition.

Fishing in the water - Peg 13
The Approach
I decided that method feeder, bomb and short pole would be my attack.  This was confirmed when a smiling Phil Briscoe walked past and said, bomb and pellet all day long on this peg.

I did set up the pole and as mentioned earlier it was 18 inches at 13 metres.  Due to the low water levels we were allowed to fish in the water for fish welfare reasons, to enable us to get our keepnets deep enough.  Better be careful with the mobile phone!

The All-in
All-in, bomb and pellet went straight out, pinging 8mm pellets every couple of minutes.  Alan two pegs down from me was straight into a large carp.  Turned out he had foul hooked it in the tail, but no-the-less he landed all 8lb of it.

I was recasting every 5 minutes and didn't have a knock for the first hour.  I switched to the method feeder on the same bomb and pellet line and I eventually got the first pull around bite.  It was a good fish which unfortunately broke the hooklength at the net... gutted!

Bob and Anthony and the pegs either side of me where catching regularly and I was well behind.  I stayed on the method feeder for another hour and took a couple of smaller carp on it.  In the meantime I had fed a line at the end of my keepnets and there was activity, so I shipped out the pole and took 4 very small skimmers, I needed larger fish.

I noticed three very large carp, around 10lb a piece, swimming at my feet, so I dropped in some luncheon meat to keep them busy.  I couldn't resist, so I bait up the bomb rod with a large worm and dropped it to my right... it's was so frustrating seeing these fish and the tip not moving beyond a very obvious line bite...

For the last couple of hours I went out on the bomb and method feeder and landed two large carp, one to 10lb and the other around 8lb.

The Result
I took a battering from Bob P who had 61lb and Anthony who had 33lb.  I weighed just over 26lb.

What would I have done differently?  I would not have set up the pole, the lure of the close in fish was too tempting, but it was clear that the shallow bank had been dominated by bomb/pellet and method feeder to the middle of the lake.

The winner was Rob Austin who was on the Burr Bank who took carp from his 5metre line on 10mm cubed luncheon meat.  Good win Rob!

Next stop, the bar at Chateau Disney and a night out in Worcester with a small breakaway crew... the draw the next day would be at 9am...  needless to say it would be a late one... here is a picture of BNF, Matchfishing Scene's leader... sleeping beauty isnt he ;-)


BNF dreaming of big fish...

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