Kings Arms Trophy – Ringles
The third match Ryan has fished in the Headcorn junior competitions took place at the Ringles reservoir. (sorry no pics today)
Drawing peg 1 was where we had seen a few fish, but there was only a gap about 3 foot wide, and about 10ft out to the edge of the reeds for the keepnet an to bring in any fish. After a stormy night, it was very humid, with a slight breeze from the south and around 27C.
His plan of attack was going to be 2 lines today, one shallow at 11m, and 4m over the top of the reeds in the margin to his right. Bait would be 6mm & 8mm pellet, and feeding 4mm pellet. While setting up the pole there were a few fish topping, but nothing showing near the lads, and more to the centre of the res.
All In at 1pm, and out on the shallow line with 6mm pellet the rudd started knocking about the bait. Lots of very small bites, and after about 10mins, the first rudd was in the net. Firing in 2-3 pellets every 30-50 seconds kept the rudd coming in at the rate of about 1 every 5 minutes. All of these were around the 4-8 oz mark, but no sign of the F1’s/carp yet.
Deciding to fish with an 8mm pellet, and feed 6mm’s to try and avoid the smaller rudd from knocking at the bait, the first of the carp showed up and out went the elastic. Getting it to the edge of the reeds was the easy part, but trying to steer it into the gap to land it without fouling up on the end of the keepnet was the bit that took the time. Never the less, he did very well, despite the odd bad word !!!!
After landing a couple more carp of the average 1-2LB, the wind dropped, and the water was dead calm. This followed by the arrival of about 30 Canadian geese on to the lake seemed to slow things right down for everyone. After about an hour, and only the odd rudd, the wind picked up again enough to put a nice ripple on the water, and things picked up again. After about another 8 carp/F1’s, and into the last hour, he started to fish in the margin.
Not long and the float buried with a nice mirror carp of about 3LB. Another 6 fish caught in the margin, and that was the end of the match.
It has been very slow and patchy for all the lads, but again good to see that they all had a few fish each in their nets.
By the time they reached Ryan as the last one to weigh in, the best so far was 26LB’s. He didn’t think he was that close, but I guessed he had around 28-30lb. Good old dad, not far off, and he had won with 32lb.
Not the best day’s fishing on the lake, but after a very warm day, and not much sleep overnight due to the thunderstorms, he managed to do enough for his second win out of 3 matches so far.