Summerhayes Friday Open.

A return to summerhayes today as I haven't fished the venue since late last year so after a breky at hilltops it was off to the fishery for a welcome cuppa and a chance to get some lowdown on how it had been fishing, Longs lake was are port of call and with 14 fishing we were all going to have plenty of room, at the draw and I find myself on the road bank peg 28 which seemed to be quite a fair area the last time I fished here, for company I had Scott Russell on peg 26 and Martin Addicott on peg 30 who took me up on the quid side bet' I planned to fish worm and caster across to the island, meat at the bottom of the near side shelf and groundbait  down to the vacant pallet on my left in the shallower water, pluming up I had around 4ft across to the island as I couldn't get close to the bank with the reeds growing right out which wasn't ideal but it was the same all around the lake for all of us, down to the pallet I found around 2ft or so close towards the bank and the meat line I planned to fish against the shelf in 4ft of water.

At the all in I fed two pots of wetted groundbait and red maggot to the pallet and a palm full of meat against the shelf to my left, Starting across at 14mts my attack over was going to be a worm and caster job for me today as I had some good results on it when I was here last year so with a small cadpot I cupped in my chopped worm and caster mix and started with a whole worm on the hook, 20mins in and my first fish was a small tench followed by some tiny perch so I started to catapult caster over the top which seemed to work for while giving me two small carp before I foul hooked one which bolted along the bank pulling a hidden branch right across my baited area and after 15mins faffing around trying to steer my rig in the gap and ending up snagged to the branch twice after missed bites I had to give up and try a new line and I new the worm was a bad choice in the depth of water I had so move over 2mts along the reeds and began to feed some micro and tried a 6mm hard banded pellet on the hook.

After a few liners I swapped to a rig about 18inches deep as by now Scott was putting a run of fish together fishing around the same depth without feeding anything and it wasn't long before I hooked a carp only for it to find another snag and attach me to the bank! Another swim over with".

By now Scott had about 10 carp and was doing best on the lake from what I could see as Martin was having as much luck as me at this time, With the carp being around the same stamp I new I had to start catching if I was to have any chance of catching up with Scott, I was hoping when I went onto my meat line they would be queuing up but how wrong I was as it failed to produce at all through the day and I was wishing I hadn't been topping up with palmfuls at regular intervals  A try on the groundbait line with a worm didn't show any signs and another attempt across shallow saw me waiting to long to catch small carp and I was getting nowhere and with 90mins to go I fed a pot full of my worm and caster mix I still had for fishing across onto a 5mt line in front of me and got a rig out to try for a run of silvers as I hadn't seen many being caught even by the anglers who had targeted them from the off.

Whilst I let it settle for 10mins I tried again with a worm over the groundbait tight in and had a bite straight away but not a carp as I had expected but a 1lb plus perch'! No more bites saw me switch to the new line with the head of a worm and straight away I had some nice chunky roach and a couple of 1lb skimmers before it died off and small perch followed but by swapping between this and the pallet swim for the remainder of the match I added some more skimmers and a couple more 2lb carp, Scott Had got stronger as the day wore on and ended the day winning the match with ease with a great 76lb and he did really well to keep them coming so fair play to him, I ended the day with 16lb odd of carp and 12lb odd of silvers for 28lb and 5th on the day but more annoying I was only 3oz off second place pay-out for the silvers pool and 1lb off winning it outright so a switch to the silvers was a bit late for me but I learnt a lot today which is always a good  thing and after a chat with owner Pete after the match he informed me he and some off the locals were going to clear a couple of swims back to the bare bank in-front of each peg which will be nice hopefully in time for my next visit.

Full results - 1st Scott Russell (Tackle UK) 76lb

                       2nd Aide Bishop (Summerhayes) 43lb 6oz

                       3rd James Cooper (Guru) 40lb 4oz

Silvers -         1st Roger Russell (Tackle Uk) 13lb 8oz

                       2nd Dan Bull (Summerhayes) 12lb 6oz .