Back to our lovely club lake at Riverside Road in St. Albans for this match.

22 on this match so we would have a bit of room with the fishery to ourselves.
I drew peg 9 which has had some good form during the summer with carp and some big bream.

I set up a carp rig and a silvers rig to fish at 5m and a rig for down the edge to my right under the trailing branches of the willow tree.

I started by feeding 2 balls of groundbait with micro pellets and a few casters at 5m and 3 balls of groundbait down the edge. Starting on the light rig at 5m with meat on the hook I foul hooked and lost a large skimmer or bream first put in so I thought I would start to catch fairly soon as there were obviously some fish came to the feed but it was hard going, it took my about 30 minutes to catch my first fish.

I had a quick go down the edge now and then hoping to find some carp and bream had arrived but this didn't really produce until the last hour or so. I had to just catch what I could at 5m, After changing to double maggot hookbait I did have a little run of decent skimmers but then nothing for quite some time.

With an hour and 15 to go I went onto the edge line, triple maggot caught me a good bream but then I was getting pestered by tiny roach and perch so on went 2 pieces of corn which resulted in another bream then a 5lb carp.

After a quiet 15 minutes I tried worm on the hook, this brought a couple of skimmers and that was it, all out!

My 1 carp went 5lb 1oz and with the silvers my total was 18lb 13oz which put me 10th on the match.

​The full results can be seen HERE.

Something a bit different for this VAC club match, the park lake at Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage.
I do like the variety of the club matches.

The main target would be Bream and Skimmers but there are also lots of Roach and some big carp in the lake.
My main attack was the groundbait feeder at 45m with another feeder line at 24m for somewhere to start and a 4m whip line for the roach.

I mixed up 2 lots of groundbait,  a mix of Sonubaits 50:50 Green and Match Method mix for the 45m line and a more roachy mix of Sonubaits So Natural Roach with some F1 Black for the 24m line which I also fed on the whip line.

I started by putting 10 big feeders full in at 45m with casters and corn in the groundbait, then fished the 24m line for an hour or so for a few roach and a small skimmer. I then went out to the 45m line and after a while and a few casts the tip finally went round a couple of times resulting in two 1lb+ skimmers, with no more indications for 45 minutes I put in a couple more feeders full and went on to the 4m whip for a bit to see if there were Roach there in any numbers.

The whip did produce some Roach but it was a bit slow going so went back out on the feeder and soon after a nice Bream was in the net followed by another on the next cast.
This was the pattern up to the last hour, 2 quick fish then had to wait some time for the next fish.
Triple maggot on a 50cm hooklength caught me all the feeder fish.

The first half of the last hour did not produce a bite so I spent the last 30 minutes on the whip for a few more Roach.

From what I had heard I was in with a chance of the win and when my catch went 20lb 14oz this was indeed enough to win the match with 17lb 15oz in second and a good all Roach catch of 12lb 15oz in third.

​The full results can be viewed HERE.

For our 6th match we visited a new venue for me, Wold Farm.

We were on "The Oaks Lake". A very pretty lake with large lily pads in every swim.
This was my view on peg 5.​

Started by feeding a 5m line with pellets then fished in front of me with a top kit, also feeding the edge to my left. Hook bait was corn or pellet.

After 1.5 hours I only had a couple of 2lb Barbel and two skimmers so I went onto the edge and after a short time started catching some carp with a few skimmers in between. I had been loose feeding the 5m line with pellets so tried that a couple of times shallow and managed 2 carp on this but the edge carp were a little bigger so went back to the edge for the rest of the match.

The 4th hour was good, catching fairly quickly then it slowed up and just 1 carp in the last 30 minutes. I ended with 28 carp, 2 barbel and about 14 skimmers.. 

Total weight was 122lb 13oz which was good for 5th on the match.

Full result can be seen HERE.