Sunday 17th February - Plantation Lake Open

As it was my first week back at work following my holiday plus I had a few surprises to deal with namely travelling to Crawley on the Tuesday, back home then return to Crawley on the Wednesday afternoon, all day in Crawley on the Thursday with an overnight then Portsmouth on the Friday it meant I had not thought much about where to fish on the Sunday. A phone call from Paul Nicholls on the Thursday soon sorted that and he asked if I wanted to fish an open on Plantation Main Lake. I thought why not as there had been lots of rain and the River Kenn was out of sorts with the level well down. It was also a 09:00 draw which meant a bit of a lie in as I went to a race night on the Saturday night with some friends.Breakfast was also available from 08:00 and it would appear Karen who ran the Cafe at Bullocks Farm has moved to take over the Cafe here. I took breakfast at home though to get a few extra z's in.
On arrival all the usual suspects were there and I think there were 16 in all so plent of room, normally the maximum is 20. Only matches are permitted on this lake in the winter period as it is very popular with pleasure anglers April - Oct ish. The map below gives some idea of the pegs, not all are pegged in a match due to some being very tight and others not fishable anymore.

Paul put all the pegs in a hat and just lobbed them in the air, one fell at my foot so that was mine, on opening I saw I had Peg 23 which is not good although I had seen reports of Rich Lovering catching a few down the edge, however as the payout was top 3 plus only top in silvers my decison was more or less made. A conversation with Glenn Calvert suggested down the left hand edge was worth a look.

I guess one good thing about the day was I had plenty of room, the nearest angler on my left was on 18,  Rich Heatley and to my right on 25 Paul Faires.

View from my peg

Left hand margin

Simple approach today, Silvers out in front on a couple of lines at 13m and 2 area's along the left margin. Silver lines baited up with caster and groundbait and micro and caster / dead maggot. Margin with micro and 4mm pellet. While I had been away Cadbury angling had organised a couple of Silverfish Matches on the lake, both had been won by Steve Mayo with 20lb odd. Today was very bright and cold so difficult.
At the all in I tried the line at 12 o'clock and after 5 mins had a small skimmer about 12oz, trhe 15 mins later a better one around a 1lb. I kept feeding small amounts but if I had only knew that they had been catching better with just cupping in groundbait I might have done a lot better as the bites started to back off, I should have clocked what was going on as I had several roach from area's I didn't feed. I tried the margin a few times but not so much as an indication. Lance Tucker was bagging carp off peg 27 on a small groundbait feeder with pellet (this peg has a lot of form with a decent island chuck). I saw Rich Heatley catch a few down his left had edge and Nick Harvey next to him on 17 started to catch, a peg that does not alway produce that much by way of carp but he was going well catching in open water. All this helped me decide to stick with the silver line and apart from the odd roach I had a decent skimmer about 3lb. About 30 mins from the end a carp took me on a merry dance on 6 elastic and match top 3 but landed anyway.
As the scales came around top silver weight was 8lb 4oz and there was only 4 other anglers plus me to weigh. I weighed 8lb 12oz, I knew Paul next door had a few silvers, he weighed 8lb 6oz, Lance on 27 had all carp for a match win and Glenn Calvert on 31 had a few small carp and weighed just under 8lb in silvers. So.... for a change I made the correct decison, results as follows....

Overall
1st   Lance Tucker 92lb 10oz peg 27
2nd  Brian Slipper 76lb 12oz peg 8
3rd   Nick Harvey 52lb 8oz

Silvers
Ivan Currie 8lb 12oz peg 23

Next week we have a Clevedon Club match on Woodlands Lake Trinity Waters.