Acorn sprint finish

A Tuesday affordable open at Acorn, mild weather saw 15 fishing so a reasonable turnout for December.

Mike drew me peg11, a great peg that should give me a chance of framing. I had half planned in my mind to fish for silvers, but this peg is capable of a framing place so I had to have a go at some carp at some point.

I fed 3 small kupping kit pots of loose ground bait and maggots at 13m into the open water on my left. (Silvers line for later if needed, this was quite a positive amount of feed but it was a throw away line)

The sun was straight in my face and made it hard for me as I started dobbing over to the island, this proved fruitless and after 30mins I couldn't see anymore, so I was forced to have a look down my left margin. On this peg the left margin runs down into a corner about 12m/13m away. I worked my way along the edge dobbing in all the likely looking spots, not even a roach☹.

When I got all the way into the corner I had a fast bite which I connected with and was into my first carp a little 2lb mirror was in the net👍, 2 more followed quickly, just enough to get my hopes up before it died again.

I thought I would have an early look on the silvers GB line, whilst I waited for the sun to move. No signs so I decided to go over to the island see if I could get a response to some feed.

I was fishing on a very slight slope in about 2.5foot of water, fed a pinch of maggots through a kinder pot, laying the rig up the slope, with floating maggot on, to give a slow fall of the hookbait. I kept at this for 40mins or so, all u could catch was roach and not many of those☹.

Back over the GB silvers line, had signs and even some lightning fast bites/indications but couldn't catch???? Tried laying on didn't help.

So I am now 3hrs in only got about 6lb in total and wondering where my next fish might come from?

I went back over to the island fed a small nugget of GB, I also went down to the corner where I caught dobbing and plumbed up a rig to fish corn there, for the last hour.

Back over on the island I had a couple of skimmers and roach, this was an improvement and I felt the GB had helped, so I fed a bit more GB. On the silvers GB line for 10 mins, one skimmer was my reward (this was the only fish I caught on that line all day).

Over to the island again another skimmer and a carp, i now started to feed maggots every put over and I had a run of carp and F1s. The line went a bit quite, so I fed another bit of GB and went over the corn line in the long margin, a 2lb carp was quickly hooked, but I couldn't follow it with another.

I went back over to the island only 15mins left now, hooked a good carp about 7lb😊😊, I thought I might be close to the frame now, i went straight over again hooked another, hook pulled and rig was tangled🤦.

Managed to untangle rig and get back out, 1min to go hooked another👍, biggest of the day at about 8lb it was the final fish of my match.

I weighed 38lb exactly, which was the same weight as Ray on peg 9, frustratingly this put us joint 4th, just out of the framing places, one more decent carp might have won the match.

A great day with the carp really turning up for a few of us in the last hour.