GAS - Richardson Lake, 26th June 2019

Wednesday open at Richardson Lake on the Marsh Farm Complex and an opportunity to have my third fish at this lake after two previous attempts.

A comment from one of the guys today will stick in my mind... Richardson Lake fishes differently every single day of the week... never a truer word!  Here is the blog of the day.

The Draw
27 fishing today and I managed to get an early dip in the bag.  Peg 44 was home for the day.

Fishing was 11:30am until 6pm.

Set-up
With the wind trucking down the lake a long pole line and waggler option looked out of the window.  It didn't stop me setting them up!  Main lines of attacker as follows:

  • Bomb / Small cage feeder across
  • Top Two + Three section straight ahead
  • Top Two + Three margins left and right
Baits mainly natural, maggots, casters, sweetcorn, groundbait and some pellets

All-In
Starting on the short line, I cupped in a small amount of groundbait with some micro pellets and went straight over the line with double maggot.  The float went immediately and a small roach was in the net.  The first hour passed pretty quickly with small roach, perch and the odd skimmer hitting the net. I was topping the line up with a small amount of ground bait after every five fish and it was working well.

Then the bites simply dried up, even trying beyond the feed nothing, so I topped the line up with one proper ball of groundbait and went onto the feeder across as the wind was too strong for the waggler. The wind also proved to strong to get any bait over the far side with the catapult too... so I opted for 5 minute casts to get some feed over.

No bites for the next hour except for rattles from small roach.  I was trying sweetcorn, maggot and caster as hook bait.

Back on the short line and I get a visitor in the shape of my mate Nathan.  I'd switched to pellet on the short line, hard pellet banded and the 0.4g rig was moving through the swim which wasn't ideal and the weight of the pellet was sinking the float.  A change to a 0.6g rig helped somewhat and I finally got back in touch with the skimmers using a 4mm soft pellet.

The short line was proving frustrating still, so I changed to double dead red maggot and fished over depth to hold the float on station.  More small roach and perch in the net.

With the clock counting down and into the final two hours, I prepared the right hand margin swim with a ball of groundbait and the left margin swim with some sweetcorn and casters.

Back out on the feeder for ten minute casts and a change of bait to a banded 6mm pellet and the tip wrapped round with a lovely bream gracing the net.  Next cast it hardly had chance to settle and the tip straight round again, this time a lovely tench however, that was the end of the little spell as no more bites came despite remaining on the line for an hour.

The final hour I concentrated on the margins however not even a bite.  I'd tried sweetcorn and pellets opting to avoid maggots due to getting plagued with small perch.

All-out called and the rumour on the bank was that it had fished very hard in our section.

Result
8lb 2oz for last in the section, well done to Ian Dixon on Peg 45 who managed to fish long pole to net 19lb 8oz for the section win.  I'm not really getting along with this lake!  Congratulations to the winners and I lost a shiny pound to Steve Moore.  Well fished cobber.

Conclusion
After the match my thoughts switched to what I could have done differently... the method feeder across?  Yep, next time I'll have a rod setup for this.  I should have fished across with the feeder longer than I did as it appears most of the fish in my section where caught that way.

I didn't manage to get any fish from the margins, yet this is an area to plunder late in the match so I need to get some tips from some of the regulars in that area.

Finally, the incident with the car driver and his lack of patience almost resulting in breaking my pole.  It's a lake first and foremost not a public road.  You could have simply asked politely if you thought I didn't acknowledge your presence.  Anyway, no damage done, please be more considerate next time.

Thanks to Dave for chasing him down!

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