MFS - Witherington Farm, 2nd May 2015

After many hundreds of messages on a facebook group set-up with the Withy crew asking, "is it Withy yet?", along with Sconey, Andy T and Animal doing www.dubsmash.com impressions,Withy 2015 is finally here!

A lot of the lads got to the fishery with enough time for a bit of practice.  When I mean practice, not the angling but the drinking... by the time I arrived many cans of Stella had been consumed and also half a bottle of white stuff that had been in Ricky (Happydanglers) cupboard for about 30 years!  It was rocket fuel, bloody awful too!

Andy G was giving a masterclass in how to loose carp while using Shedders gear... here is a small snippet of video.

The two minibuses picked us up, back to the Kings Arms and onto the nights events, mainly at YOYO's... the pictures are at the bottom of the blog.

Saturday morning came around, there were many sore heads after way too many cocktails at YOYO's.  The main culprit was a Bazooka as invented by Sconey.  Poor Gareth he was definitely suffering, that final absinthe knocked him out.

The Draw
A well organised draw by Sconey and Andy T.  The pegs today would be on Selwood and Cottage. My home for the day would be Peg 11 on Selwood.

The Set-Up
I had an end peg and corner of Selwood all to myself, an area that Gareth (he of Badger fame) mentioned was the peg to draw.... in winter...

I figured it would be mostly margin work, as I couldn't reach the other platform with 16 metres of pole I would also setup a small method feeder.  So the lines were picked:
  • 14 metres down the right hand margin.  Depth was pretty even so I could also come away from the margin into open water
  • 5 metre line straight ahead, again, depth even giving me plenty of scope to start up new lines if needed
  • Method rod clipped up to the far margin and to the platform (Peg 12)
Bait was very simple, pellets (Expander, Micro, 4mm and 6mm), sweetcorn, hemp and some crushed expander groundbait.

All-In
Sconey called the all in, so a quick pot of hemp and a couple of kernels of corn to the right hand margin and over with a double corn hookbait.  The float buried and a very angry ghost carp was on with the black hydro elastic streaming out... a typical ghost carp.

Going straight back on the margin line hoping for another carp, I would be disappointed as after 20 minutes of lifting and dropping, nothing.  The ghostie must have been an early mug fish.

Next attack option was the far margin bank, unreachable by pole, so out came the method feeder.  I was timing the bites and they were coming after about 20 minutes, proper rip round bites and more carp in the net.

Five more carp but I wasn't catching at the rate I expected.  So a quick look on my short line straight ahead.  This was only producing small skimmers slowly...

As the match went on I was swapping between the margin lines and straight ahead but could not get into any rhythm.  Alan next to me had a few tussles with some large carp and then back to skimmers. Pete Bailey was bagging some very large fish on his metre line and the rest of us were struggling.

Stoney called the all-out and I didn't have a clue what weight I had.  At least the weather was kind to us.

Result
26lb, not enough to get me anywhere in the section, apart from 5th!  Time to drown my sorrows in the bar!

Conclusion
Maybe I should have brought some luncheon meat with me... the fish were to few and to long between bites.  I did enjoy watching Pete Bailey landing some monster fish from his 5 metre line and also fishing at 18-19 metres across to the island!  Top Bombing Pete!

Fishing Pictures
YOYO Pictures

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