Final winter league match

I wish I had more to write about from our last winter league match but with me drawing on the shallower section of the lake I was really against it from the start of getting anywhere in the match. We had a ground frost the night before and with a few extra anglers also fishing it meant the pegging was even tighter on the side I fished. The Lake level has now also started to drop as the race course club have started to use some water from it to keep the tracks soft and there hasn't been much rain in Sydney for a while.

My peg for the final winter league match

On plumbing up at my peg I couldn't find anything deeper than 2 1/2 ft anywhere on the pole up to 16 mts..chucking a bomb around up to 60 mt also failed to find a count of more than a second anywhere so my confidence was really high at the start today of getting some fish...not...!

To cut out all the boring details I fed swims at 13, 14 and a 16 mt line at different angles, fished a waggler at 35 to 40 mts and a small feeder further out to end the match with 7 carp for 7.4 kgs. It was frustrating as I didn't have a bite the first 2 hours and then when I did start getting indications would hook a fish on one method, land it and have to wait at least a half hour or more before they would come back on any line again despite switching around. They just seemed to spook so easy in the shallow water, then the tight pegging and cold night didn't help either. Anyway that's the Winter league out of the way and now have the SCAC club Championships to start next month. With the extra anglers now coming out of winter hibernation am not too sure how this venue will go for pegging. With the levels dropping and now probably at least 25 fishing it will be a struggle to get all on...plus after going through all the results it is the same area the big weights come out of each match it may be a draw bag venue for matches unless they move about when it warms up.

"Tickle me Yorkie" on the next peg.....I could have tickled him with a 9 mt pole from my peg........!

And "Tickle me Maurice" on the other side...almost 10 mts need to prod Maurice during the match and keep him awake...He had a tough day with one fish from a peg that had 33 kgs last time. Hopefully we have seen the last of Sydney's frosts.

"Brummie" Paul (or "sticky fingers" now is what I am calling him) ended up drawing a new hastily added end peg today on the deeper dam in and had half the lake to himself. Well done to him and he make no mistakes and weighed in 38 kgs to win today's match and overall league with 2 wins and a 4th. Bill Childs was second with 33 kgs from the favourite peg on the far deeper side and all the weights from that peg went 28 kgs, 25 kgs, 20 kgs down to 9 kgs almost in a line to where it shallows up. My day was made more frustrating by the fact that when sitting watching my motionless float I was facing over to these pegs and could see landings nets flying all around the place from the first 5 mins of the match. I did have the heaviest weight from the 7 anglers on my section with 3 kgs being the next weight to mine. Overall I think I finished 9th or 10th in the league but I think there was just 1 point separating the top 3 to 10 places so it was a pretty close league still but Please hurry up warm weather!

"Landing net wars" on the far side all day long.

Chatting to Paul after he did 'modestly' say he had been lucky with the draws and drew on fish in both matches he won and had them straight from the start. Looking through the results he said I was unlucky with my draws also. But well done to him and also as its his first match series here since moving to Oz. When I got home I decided to try and sort my drawing problems out and slammed the tackle shed door on my right hand........at least 20 times, so hopefully drawing with my left hand from now on will improve things for the club Champs !

Our new club also has a new league starting on the 23rd of this month and we have decided to run 6 matches with the top 3 fishing in a final against the top 3 from the Victorian league for close to $1000 winner take all prize money so this will be a pretty competitive league. There are still some minor details to be sorted but at the moment there are 12 anglers booked in from NSW which also means we can fish some of the smaller fairer waters we pleasure fish on and hopefully should have some good weights of fish. Our First match is on Glenwood where I had the big eel in the last blog and some of the others fished it last week and had 100 lb bags also so will be looking forward to this. Plus the fact "Sticky fingers" has now started working here means his midweek practice sessions have been curtailed from now on....Ha ha.....he started working in the Coco Cola plant last week so I have now added several litres of coke to our weekly shopping list at home just to make sure he's kept in there all week !

Tomorrow a few of us are back for a knock up on our new club lake here and also meeting with some members of another park committee at the lake to let them see the sort of fishing we do and hopefully gain access to a few park lakes that we have been trying for a long time to get in and fish. I have seen lots of carp in these particular lakes before and if you throw in some bread it's like a feeding frenzy on a fish farm but sadly because of a few idiots fishing is banned on there. Also the fact they are close to the city and its quiet a big public park it can't be bad for any sort of promotion of coarse fishing should we get access.

The temps are to hit 29 degress tomorrow here in Sydney so Come on Summer, your almost there !