Partridge Lakes Open 21 Feb 2016

Hi all.

Fished the open at Partridge today. Drew peg 25 on Covey 2. Team mate Alan Lamb had it last week in the winter league and did not really catch until the end finishing with 41lb. Weather was warmer than of late but the wind was quite strong at times and blowing straight across the peg from right to left which would make long pole fishing a bit difficult.

The peg is at the far end of Covey 2 from the roadside at the corner of the island and a long corner margin to fish up to the unused peg 26. Club member Mark Bibby was pegged on 23 next to the bridge, so  a quid side bet was agreed before the start. Set up same rigs as last week, 3ft rig at 10 metres, track rig, a 4 ft rig and a bread set up. I started on the 4ft rig at 13 metres to the left of the corner of the island with pellet. No bites here, so tried the same rig at 4 sections to the left close to the near bank, missed a tiny bite, but nothing else happened. By this time Mark had already caught a few. So I went out to 10 metres with single maggot feeding 3-4 every couple of minutes. Managed 5 F1's from here and lost a good fish, before it slowed down. The wind would also blow the rig about a bit so presentation was not great.

After about 1.5 hours I picked up the bread rig and started at 6 sections just off a small clump of reeds, caught one F1 here, but after that there were no more bites. Added another section, and apart from a couple of knocks did not get any proper bites. Put another section on and again no bites. Moved to 13 metres and swung the rig towards the empty platform on peg 26 and after a couple of minutes I caught a nice Carp around 6lb. Similar to last week I fished this area for most of the remainder of the match catching F1 's and 3 more carp. It was easier to fish this area as the wind was blowing into that corner and I had about 2-3ft of line above the float, so the rig was not moving around as much when it was gusty. I tried the track line in the last half hour and caught 2 more F1's but it was not quick fishing so I went back to the bread and caught another carp about 4-5lb in the last 5 minutes.

Ended up with 21 fish 7 of maggot rest on bread for 43lb 2oz. The warm wind had definitely pushed the fish into the corner, so it was a case of dropping the rig in the right place. Once I found the fish bites would happen within a couple of minutes. Mark had been catching steadily for the whole match rotating lines by the bridge on along the far bank. He ended up with 46 fish for just over 50lb. I had seen him catch a few smaller fish so was hoping that I might have caught him up with my bigger stamp. In the end it was not quite enough, so my pound went his way and hopefully I will get it back sooner rather than later. Mark won the 5 peg section and was unlucky to not get on the top 6 list, missing out by 2lb.

 I have really enjoyed the last couple of matches fishing bread. Catching carp along with F1's for a change has been a lot better than previous visits and obviously catching a few fish and getting a decent weight helps as well.

Next week is the last round of the Partridge winter league so hopefully I can carry on catching a few fish and the team gets another good result.

Tight lines.