Kippax Park Open Saturday 14 September

Well it had to happen, after a run of top three places in open matches it was finally back down to earth with a bump! As soon as I started publicising this blog a little a few mates were quickly jokingly suggesting that 'you only post when you frame'. I've posted all my matches since the end of July but now it's time for a bad weekend! First up, the Kippax Park open. A few more on this week (22 anglers) and with that figure most thought that both match lakes would be used. But because Osprey had been so hard the previous week, Sean the match organiser put us all on the 27 peg Lapwing. I had no problems with this as at least it was fair for everyone and in any case I have a lot of respect for anybody who organises matches for others at no gain for themselves. It did however mean that space was at a premium and a hard match was expected.

Out of the bag came peg 12. This peg is nothing spectacular but I wasn't too unhappy, the only slight problem is that it is the full 17.5m to get across to the island here and in recent weeks there seems to have been very few ide caught in the area. There were around six spare pegs dotted around, giving those next to them an advantage but I wasn't one of them. Infact every peg was in from peg 7 right through to 16. I couldn't have drawn more smack back in the centre of this line of anglers if I'd tried! The pegs here are quite close together which doesn't help matters either. I had Andy Barker next to me, who does well on the venue, and also another old mate in the form of Bob Rymer to my right. Bob is part of a band of three Rymer brothers who all fish together and were present today!


I set up my usual Kippax rigs to fish tight across and down the side, plus an ide rig for the middle. I also put up the Method rod and a slightly deeper rig for across, on lighter tackle than usual for those ide, which I have come to learn the importance of. This was about 2ft deep next to a sedge. The match started slowly but I soon had an ide and an early mug carp in the net, taken from the mudline. However sport began to slow as the fish realised what was going on with all these anglers around the lake! An early look down the middle produced a surprise small carp and a few ide but bites took an age to materialise.

At one stage I managed to get the deeper island rig working and took a run of ide, then a run of three carp in a row on it, but that soon died. In the last few hours Andy Barker managed to get some big carp going down the edge to his left towards peg 10, but strangely didn't get a thing towards me. I fed a line towards a small pipe at 5m to the right in the edge but the fish were extremely spooky and I could barely even get a liner, never mind a proper bite. Bob had tempted a few better fish too fishing to a sedge in deeper water down his edge, but he was having to wait for them. I could sense I was falling behind...

In the last hour I managed to get a few fish feeding on the mudline again but I was having problems with vegetation in the water, which had been disturbed by feeding fish and moorhens! I couldn't get my rig in sometimes, even after trying to clear it with a special top kit I have with a blade attached. It was very frustrating but I did get a few late carp. Andy Barker weighed in 58lb of bigger fish, as did Bob with 48lb. Most of my carp were 2-3lb things and I had 9lb 12oz of ide, for a very disappointing 44lb total. Fishcaked I was! I was pleased to see Andy Stoner win the match with 73lb (14 carp and 14 ide) from the other side of the lake, his first result in a while, the man is BACK!

Result
1. Andy Stoner 73lb peg 23
2. Sean Rogers 68lb peg 15
3. Andy Barker 58lb peg 11
4. Neil Rymer 57lb peg 7

 

 

Andy Stoner (Rod Stewart when he takes that cap off!)