Evening pairs match, Sam's Lakes Headcorn

-


I’ve never fished an evening match before but the idea of avoiding the mid-day heat and enjoying the cooler hours and potentially better evening fishing was appealing. Nick needed a partner and knew how much I like this venue so we drew at 4 and fished from 5 until 8. I’ve only fished this place about 3 times and the match today was on the bottom lake that I have only ever fished for silvers. Usually everyone fishes for the carp but I wasn’t sure of the stocking density. They also seem to be caught mainly from around the group of islands to the right and not in open water. Continuing with my year of bad draws I pulled out peg 5 which was in no-man’s land with only open water and Lilly pads close in to my left. Nick, who I am slowly begging to think is a magnate (no, not that sort of magnate) drew a peg in the middle of the island cluster but without an island chuck. Without knowing if Carp would dominate this match, I took 3 pints of maggot with me as this place is stuffed with silvers as well as the usual carp gear and a box of mixed pellets, meat and corn.

At the start I fed a couple of jam jars of the mixture by the Lilly pads and chucked out a conker bomb clipped up at the same distance as my pellet waggler which was about 40m. I fed 8mm pellets over the top to draw them up but didn’t have anything but liners for half an hour.
Next out was the waggler and I began to catch fish between 2lb and 8lb but not as quickly as Nick who was apparently catching them one-a-bung. I rested the swim about half way through the match and had a look by the Lilly pads but there was no sign of life down there.

During the course of the match I was feeding maggots 10m out at about 2 o’clock. The swim was absolutely swirling with fish but I didn’t see anything bigger than a few ounces and all the while I was putting carp in the net I wasn’t about to fish for silvers.

To cut a short story even shorter, I weighed in 40 odd pound of carp which was 2nd on the lake and Nick had around 100lb.............in 3 hours! Good enough for a win and a lovely evening’s fishing.