Busy Fool

Managed to get my name onto one of Tony Rixons Plantation Fishery silvers only matches. This venue is just about as good as silver fishing gets around these parts so I was well chuffed!

Things didn't start well, left my rod bag at home☹🤣🤣😂, so I had to go home and get it, this put me 25mins behind everyone else setting up🤦.

I drew peg15 (permanent peg 32), not a bad draw usually plenty of skimmers on this peg😊.

I managed to find some rigs that were made up from Acorn on Saturday so I would have to make these work! no time to setup any fresh ones.

I fed one ball of GB laced with maggots and 2mm expanders at 11m to my left, and 3 balls of the same mix at 11m to my right. The lake bed was pretty flat so I picked spots that had reflections so I could see my floats👍.

I also fed a large ball of liquidised bread at top kit and 3, the idea was to start on this for 30mins then checkout the GB lines.

Well 2hrs later I was still on the breadline catching plenty of small roach, this would prove to be a mistake.

I eventually forced myself off the breadline (having too much fun), went over the GB single ball line and foul hooked and landed a skimmer, this wasn't the start of a run as I had hoped. Si i went over the 3 ball line, foul hooked and lost 4 big skimmers in 4 puts😡😡😡😡.

Things slowed after this i swapped between the 2 GB lines with maggot and expander hookbaits, tried laying on a few inches, tried coming off bottom a few inches, couldn't seem to get anything except line bites. They were there but I couldn't catch um.

I decided to try a small ball of GB top up over both lines and started a new line at top and 3 to my left (new line was fed with small ball of GB+pinch of maggot).

Went back on the bread line, which was still producing bites from that one ball at the start🤯. I topped this up and had a run of better roach.

Tried my new GB line and had a skimmer😊. No more fish followed so topped up and went onto 12m GB lines, had a couple more skimmers, seems they were finally getting their heads down.

Another top up on both 12m lines and a look on the short GB line produced a good sized skimmer and a rogue carp, which snapped my hooklength.

Had a couple more skimmers on the 12m GB lines then with 15mins to go, I went over a topkit and one line to my right under a bush, I had been loose feeding this all day with maggot, only had the one roach on it. I weighed 15lb 15oz for about 10th, I've had a great day but I've been a busy fool, I should have focused on the GB lines, the stamp of roach I was catching wasn't right to do the weight required. 33lb has won the match so I was miles away.

Seems like the addition of the breadline has messed up my match, I usually just fish 2 groundbait lines at Plantation, this allows me to work out how the fish are responding. Leaving the GB for 2 hrs means I haven't kept in touch with whats going on. I have almost certainly missed out on quite a few skimmers.