Birkwood Winter League Round 2

Round 2 of the winter league was on the bottom pond (Oscars). There was no ice breaking to be done this week as the temp had risen very slightly and the saturday open on Emily's had produced some good weights all round the lake so i approached the draw with some optimism of a good day i just needed a good draw to get my winter league back on track. On a approaching the draw Roger held the bag out in front of me and greeted me with the words "this should be a good one" what did he mean? In went the hand and gave the bag my usual shuffle around and one fell into my hand and out came peg 4, with Roger calling me some strange names i made my way to my peg.

I had my Uncle John for company in peg 3 and Jasper in peg 5. There are 2 very good pegs you want on Oscars peg 5 and 11, but i was still very happy with peg4.

I set 3 rigs up as follows.
All rigs on Stroft 0.12
Floatwise on the 2ft ish line i used a Gerry's TBF in 4x10 size
On the 4ft ish line i used Ackoo's Pellistix in 0.3g size.
For down the track work (6ft+) on of Ackoo's slim jims in 0.4g size.
Hooks were the Mustad wide gape size 18 on all rigs.
All rigs to white hydro.

I put the plummet on and plumbed the the 3 sedges im my swim. The centre sedge was going to be the swim i fed and the left and right sedges wouldn't be getting any, my reasoning for this is if the adjacent pegs feed there swims wrong there fish may move out of there swim down to a place with no feed in and settle there, in theory.

At the start of the match i cupped in half a dozen casters at my centre sedge (2ft rig) and fished my left hand sedge with a single red maggot and the float settled, i dragged the float around the slope very slowly and eventually it dipped slightly and i lifted into my first fish which was a small stocky less than a pound. i chopped and changed between my left and right sedge taking stockies off each line with the odd 3lber making an appearance. These lines then began to slow so i tried my centre sedge.....nothing i never had a bite over an area i fed, where as jasper next to me in peg 5 was catching well over his feed.

I had no option but to go on my 4ft line to my left and right with maggot hookbaits and managed to find a few more fish but not of any size, jasper was catching a lot better stamp of fish and was looking like winning the match and 2nd was up for grabs as people all over the lake looked like they were catching very similar to my catch rate. I was very anxious at the weigh in hoping i had blown a decent peg. They started weighing at peg1 and Uncle John put 22lb on the scales then i put 36lb dead on and new jasper had better stamp of fish he put 54lb on the scales (well done mate)
and won the match. I had a long wait until i packed up and made it back to the car park to find out how i had done. I knew it would be close between me and Mathew Spruce and the far side so i asked for the results and found out i was 2nd Mathew wieghed in 35lb 20z, phew that was close!

My uncle John also won his section so we had some more beer tokens for the after match. Next week back to the open match on emily's with strong winds and rain forcast there should be some fun and games.

Thanks for reading
Tight lines
Lee.