Whitehall Silvers Match 3rd April 2011

Weather: 10C-16C cloudy patches of strong sun, gusts of wind and storm clouds narrowly missed us at end of match.
Water: A clear top layer then a rich brown colour (sediment dropped with high pressure).
Peg: 20
Baits: White & Bronze maggot, Worm and Groundbait mix
Weight: 10lb 6oz

I trundled into the Whitehall at 7:45 a good deal less hung over than the previous match which helped with my input into the usual fishing tales of the past fortnight and banter from the last match. Unfortunately, again, I had no tales of my own to add over the breakfast table so I just ploughed as much food and coffee down my gob as possible.

Onto the pool and again the open was a sell out, full credit must go to the organiser Dave Warren but also to the pool which has been fishing well. A lot of poor mothers were unfortunatley neglected. Was nice to see a couple of fellow st.johns anglers in Ash Jauncey and John Snelson. The drawbag came round and 20 came out, 21 for Ash and 18 for John, so a good competitive day was going to be had. Before I get into the nitty gritty of the match I will post a photo of my new kitpod I recently won from MFS, it is getting a lot of attention so here it is for you all to drool over:

Onto the match, now I have heard some storys of how Alf Hands has been clearly winning these events so have kept these under wraps until now, when this is the last in the series. Luckily I was pegged opposite him so could keep an eye on him, unluckily he was the only angler with 2 free pegs either side of him and on one of the best pegs on the pool.

I opted to get the fish up early, I had heard frequent small balls of groundbait to be the key to getting the silvers feeding in the upper layers. The mix I used for this was 500g sensas lake black, 300g bag'em super skimmer dark and 200g brown crumb. I mixed it quite wet as all of the mixes soak up a lot of water and I wanted to loose feed it as a small disk. Hookbaits were white and bronze maggot for this line. I also fancied some big perch so brought around a 1/4 kilo of worm that I aimed to fish the margin with.

I looked to fish between topkit +1 section to topkit  +2 sections shallow for speed of fishing and ease of feeding groundbait and maggot. I plumbed up to find bottom to set a rig on the deck just in case the fish were again reluctant to leave the bottom, I had a good 9ft of water a top kit out and this got half an inch deeper 2 more sections out. Float of choice was a Garbo DS21 in 0.8g on 0.11 powerline to a 0.09 powerline hooklength to a 20 drennan silverfish maggot. Shotting was in mind to search a bit of water for a bite so a 0.5 olivette was used with 5 no9 shot as droppers evenly spaced from olivette to the 6inch hooklength. I used this on a top 2 with doubled 5 set soft, this had to be used with a spare no4 section due to the depth.

My shallow rigs were set on 2 homemade pencils one being a 0.6g for fishing 7ft up to 6ft and the other a 0.4g for fishing 5ft up to 3ft, another rig was on standby if the fish wanted to come right up but this wasn't used. Both of these rigs are 0.13 powerline to a 0.09 poweline hooklength and size 18 drennan silverfish maggot. Shotting was strung out  evenly along the entire rig. My 5ft rig on doubled 3 and 7ft rig on a single 6 elastic.

Onto the match and I potted in a lightly squeezed tangerine size ball with as much loose groundbait as could fit in my pot on my topkit +2 line. I then went over the top with my deck rig with single bronze maggot. First 3 put ins resulted in 3 savage bites before the olivette had settled properly. I instantly threw the topkit on my roost and get the shallow rigs out to play.

8 Fish in the next 10 minutes and I start getting into a rhythm of catching throwing in a disk of groundbait shipping out feeding 5-6 maggots and repeat. This was all looking good and the fish were all of the 3oz mark but I was catching quicker than those around me. I got my self into quite a rhythm at points in the first half of the match and when this was happening I was catching quickly.

I had 30 fish by the 2 hour mark, then it went slow on people, this was in time as I got to give others some stick on the size of the 'roach' they were into as there elastic got taken for a ride by a lump of carpy things. John to my left had struck into something big and unforuntely it turned out to be a decent perch, they were on the feed and my shallow line had slowed down. I then potted my worm goo down the edge and follwed with a big worm... 30mins later without a sign and constantly feeding maggot and disks of groundbait onto my shallow line i returned to tiddler bashing.

I had been changing depths a lot during the day but found 6ft to be the optimum depth on return i was struggling with liners so went in at 5ft then shallowing to 4ft and a had a good run of rudd and ide. When this died I had to stick on an extra section to follow them out but kept feeding my short line. The last hour was sluggish with people struggling to catch, I kept chopping and changing between deck shallow rigs and even had a look down edge again. A few fish were had in the last 10 but was it enough?

When the scales came to me I saw Alf had weighed 16lb, I wasn't confident of getting close to that but second was 10lb 8oz which I fancied with around 45 fish. John put 10lb 4oz on the scales and he was catching at a similar rate to me in the middle of the match and had a lot bigger fish than mine. When I pulled my bag out it looked impressive with the number of bright roach and ide. Scales wobbled between 10lb 2oz and 10lb 10oz and finally settled on 10lb 6oz. I had beaten John but still short of 2nd so sat in 3rd, a 12lb bag then beat me out of the money but beating the other st.johns boys sat next to me was payment enough.