MFS - Lawn Farm Fisheries, Elsworth, 7th April 2013

Peg 24, right on the bend
A match organised by Neil (ns69) via the Match Fishing Scene website with points counting towards the MFS Champions League at a venue I've been to a few times over the years, Lawn Farm Fisheries near Cambourne in Cambridge.  There was a good turn out of 20 anglers and it was great to see some familiar faces as well as meeting some new guys.  Today we would be fishing Honeysuckle, the snake lake.

The Draw
The normal non-orderly queue appeared around Neil and Neilo as they started the draw.  I drew out peg 24 which is in a good area of the lake.  Meanwhile, Mark drew peg 40 and his walk was literally 6 steps to his peg. 

The Set-Up

Feed every drop in, very little!
Arriving at the peg I was very happy to see that I was on the bend and as the pegging was very generous I had a lot of far bank reeds to target.  Honeysuckle is primarily a pole venue, but I decided to set up a bomb rod to help explore the peg just in case the wind got up as I was going to fish 16 metres.  So, the swim choice were:
  • 16 metres to target the far bank straight ahead and at the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock positions
  • 13 metres to fish the base of the far bank shelf (10, 12 and 2 o'clock positions)
  • Margin rigs on my left and right side
  • Bomb rod, just in case
Bait was maggots, caster, pellets, sweetcorn and a couple of slices of bread.  Feed would be dampened micro pellets.

All-In
I was ready with 5 minutes to spare before the all in and grabbed a couple of picture of my two neighbours for the day, Ken and Ian.  The all in was called and I fed the 13 metre swim with a small kinder pot of micro pellets and dropped the double dead red maggot over it.  Lifting and dropping the float for the first 15 minutes produced no indications at all.

Ian on Peg 22 to my right had gone long and was soon into a fish, so I decided to try the 16 metre swim.  Shipping out with double dead red maggots and feeding micro pellets with the smallest frenzee softpot to the swim at 2 o'clock the float slide away and the smallest perch you'd ever seen was in my hands.  Ian had netted another fish, so they were clearly over the far bank.

Ken on Peg 26

Going back out with a 6mm expander pellet I tried the swim directly in front of me, after 10 minutes the float went and my first carp was soon in the net.  For the next 90 minutes I hooked a number of fish but like Ian, I was foul hooking them.  Ken had also foul hooked a few fish.  I managed to land the majority but it took a lot of patience.  I replumbed the depth to fish dead depth and decided to swith the pellet hookbait to punch bread and reshotted the rig with the bulk under the float and a single number 8 half way down the line to let the bread flutter down to the fish.

Ian on Peg 22
The change to bread had a very positive impact on my match as I stopped foul hooking the fish and the bread was more resilient on the hook.  The bites were also very positive.  Still feeding a very small amount of micro's my swim got stronger and stronger as the match ticked on.

Bites came along in two ways, they were either instant or they took 5 minutes of lifting and dropping.  If nothing happened afte 5 minutes I would move the right a couple of metres to the left or right, normally resulting in a fish.

The last hour was very busy and I landed 4 fish in the last 10 minutes of the match.  The whistle went and Ken commented that both myself and Barry had battered him.  I couldn't see Barry from where I was sat so was unsure what he had... we would soon find out.

The Result
Helping Neil with the weigh in, I was weighted last and recorded 49lb 4oz for second place overall, very happy with that!  Barry had a cracking net of fish with some right munters in there, he had fished corn most of the day and had taken fish from all over his swim, down the track, the far bank, everywhere.

1st - Baz315 80lb 4oz
2nd - Lewy 49lb 4oz
3rd - ns69 38lb 40z (section)
4th - Waveney One 31lb 2oz (section)
5th - Kenfish 24lb 10oz
6th - Chopppy 23lb
7th - Shuar 22lb 8oz 8th - Steve 50-50 16lb 14oz
9th - Neilio 8lb 4oz
9th - Tobyb 8lb 4oz
10th - John milne 3lb 12oz
11th - Doodums 2lb 15oz
12th - Rustington 2lb 7oz

Conclusion
The foul hooking was frustrating, but I didn't loose too many fish.  Re-plumbing and going to a bread punch bait was the turning point for me.  I had only fed about a quarter of a pint of dampened micros and used 1 slice of bread.  The luck of the draw had helped me and I was in the area where the fish were.

Mark wasn't so lucky in a poor area of the lake as commented on by a local angler...  result for me, taking another well earned point off Mark in our mini competition, now 3-2 to me!

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