Roy Makins

I was on a tight deadline this week as I planned to sort out my garage, painting and replacing its ceiling. The lovely Bernadine required this to be completed before fishing activities resumed.
However after lots of grafting by me all was completed on Wednesday and I was free to escape to Magic Lakes on Thursday 19th.
Andy Windall picked me up and as the M25 was clear we were there nice and early for bacon sarnies and coffee. The weather forecast was for heavy and thundery showers, and for a change the weatherman was correct. At times the much needed rain fell down in copious quantities.
I drew peg 16, a cracking peg inside the first corner and a good far bank swim too. I planned to fish tight to the far bank for carp for the first hour feeding GOT Micros and then plunder the little darlings later in the corner. The carp had other ideas.... I never hooked a proper carp all day nor saw any signs that they were lurking in my peg. I did catch several F1’s, some roach, bream and two small barbel which weighed 9lb, but I was flummoxed as I had expected to do well. It just shows that the fish who have fins do like to move about.
Mark Elms won off peg 14 with 38lb of carp and second was John Nipress with 27lb. Andy faired better than me off peg 24 with 19lb of fish for 4th.
Saturday 21st I was back to Lake John on the lower lake where I drew peg 8. I had Chris Vanderfelt for company on peg 7 and when we arrived at our pegs we could see lots of fish moving about in the reeds opposite on the far bank. I started my match fishing about 1 metre off the far bank and I was soon hooking carp. However the reeds were too thick and the carp too clever as in the first hour I only had two carp and 1 bream in my keepnet. I had lost several carp in the reeds and I was trying hard to ruin my peg.
I had been feeding GOT 4mm pellets at 5m and down towards peg 9 so now it was time to try and catch fish there. I soon had bream from 4 oz to 1 lb forming an orderly queue waiting to be caught, but when the odd carp came and interfered with the proceedings the bream soon scarpered. I managed to keep this line going for 3 hours, but with about 90 minutes to go I had stopped catching fish. I expected to catch carp late in my right hand margin but again the fish did not play ball. I did snare a few carp on this line to boost my total catch, but I felt that more should have cooperated and fed on my feed...
Paul Swan won off Golden Peg 14 with 81lb, Colin Fuller was second with 75lb, Paul Grant had 71lb for third and Gary Miller had 66lb for 4th place. My 60lb was 5th and the first place out of the beer tokens. However a good day was had and if the carp had been more helpful later I could have done better!
Sunday 22nd I picked Andy up and off to Greensands we went. Like last week we decided that as we had 3 poor weeks at this venue, this week we would do better. The wind today which was from the west, whereas the last few weeks had come from the north and all the fish were hiding at the hut end. The fish had moved as the hut end was very poor in the full house attendance.
I drew peg 40 and I had the company of Martin Amos on 41 and Andy Windall on 39. On my second cast I caught an F1 and on my next cast a 2lb carp. Both were caught on GOT 4mm expanders over the fishery pellets and things were looking good, for me. The wind did pick up, we had some rain, hail and thunder to make the day more enjoyable, but I managed to keep nicking the odd F1 and carp from my peg to weigh in 35lb+ and come third. Martin with 18lb and Andy with 16lb claimed I had the better peg.
Matt Younge won with 41lb and fishery owner Chris Swan was second with 37lb from the opposite end from the hut. At least half of Clio’s occupants this week were happy on the drive home with some beer tokens ready to be redeemed in a suitable hostelry. Andy is planning revenge!