Junior Spring Cup (Headcorn) – 24th May

The first junior match of the season at new club, Headcorn, on the Ulcombe main lake.

Despite arriving at 12:00 for the draw in dry, cloudy weather, the forecast for the rest of the day was not good. There were 5 juniors, and Ryan drew peg 5 ( no 8), at the end of the old part of the lake. A nice looking peg ( apologies for the lack of photo’s), with reeds to either side in the margin, and a small man-made island at about 13m in front.

Ryan chose 2 lines to fish, one at 11m just short of the island, and in the margin to his left. Plumbing up it seemed a fairly level bottom at about 3ft 6in.

On the start of the match at 1pm, he fed a couple of cups out to the 11m line of caster, maggot and meat, throwing some pellets and meat to the margin. Banding a hard 6mm pellet, straight out on the long line, it wasn’t long before the float dipped, and he was in to his first carp, which was just over 1lb. It was then straight out again, and not long before he was in to the next fish. This continued for about 40 minutes before the heavens opened, and the first of the thunder, lightning, rain and hail came down. This did slow things down a bit, and changing over to meat on the hook, he had 2 nice rudd.

Fishing was very difficult when the weather was bad, but as it brightened up in between all the rain, things really were good. At around 4’ish, there were some signs of movement in the margin, and the sun had decided to come out. With the hard pellet on the hook, and feeding meat, the bites started to come, and the carp were a lot better size, ranging from 2lb – 4lb. Worried that he may have around 50lb’s in the carp net, Ryan took the decision to put the 2 rudd back, and use the second net for carp. As it turned out, this was a good decision, as we did not know if there was a net limit, he didn’t want to break any rule, or harm the fish.

The end of the match whistle went at 5pm, just as Ryan was playing his best fish of the day, a nice common carp of around 6lb. The good news was that all the lads had caught fish, despite being soaked, and covered in mud from all the clay on the bank.

Ryan was the last to weigh-in, and the weights so far were between 18lb – 42lb. Having to remove a couple of fish from the first net because the scales only read up to 60lbs, the first weight was 53lb, meaning he had won the first match of the series. With the second net weighing in at 32lb, it gave him a total of 85lb, not bad for his first session on this lake, and only being a 4hr match.