mid section blues: Army 8 Spawny Withy

Last years AGM and group leader Kev East saw this fixture moved as previous years had seen the April match be held back by spawning fish. So it was hoped this year would be better. However nature conspired against and spawning was late this year and we managed by accident not design managed to match the hatch.

The lads looked delighted to be doing the draw.

Or perhaps its that embarrassing moment when they realised the guy in the middle is doing something with his left hand.

I drew the golden peg for Dave and an end peg for Mike. A4 (Perm peg 7) for me. Commonly known as cyanide straight the low numbers have an undeserved reputation as they can fish well. I would have liked to be further on round.

A featureless peg I hoped for a good day. Needed to get through the next round of the commercial cup. The good thing about the Army matches is the friendly banter; but that aside I wanted to catch a few today.

Set up and ready to go. I was into a munter first drop. Pole at full length and 13 hollo elastic full out, the hook length parted about 3 pegs right by the tree in the pic you see above. No bites for the next hour despite rotating through the options. Then had three roach on the middle line how they got such big baits in their mouth was a mystery to me. Ten I had my first sandpaper rough skimmer.

Today was a long slog though and the guys either side of me (Daz and Tony) agreed we would rather be at work it really was that slow.

It seemed the Carp had followed the wind and it wasn't till you got up by peg 11, 13, 15 etc that the fish started to show.

I gave up on chasing the carp and tried for the silvers to at least get some team points. Although I did have two pups. The skimmers made up my weight. I say weight lot of graft for some very skinny skimmers that were all spawned out.