Thursday- 15th June

Rover Match - Canal Peg 12

I Couldn't fit the tackle in the car, only managed to put in some rigs and essential bits, fished using my mums tackle. With over a hundred anglers on the Match drew 28th, with all the best pegs on Twin Oaks gone, I decided to have a go for a few F1s on Canal peg 12, Had a quick walk round the lake before the draw and the wind looked spot on, started across at 16m on banded focus pellet whilst feeding casters at 9m, caught a few across but it was too slow. Switched to my shallow line on banded caster and bagged up shallow, had to keep changing depths to keep them coming. Throughout the day the peg started to fade, come the last 20 minutes I could get a bite shallow, so had a look down the edge and had a nice big mirror and one massive F1, when the scales came, I thought I had about 150lb, in my four nets, but ended up weighing 171lb, with the match being across the entire complex I didn't know if it was enough, quickly headed down for the presentation and was absolutely buzzing when I found out it won the match! with 111lb 12oz coming second, It was a great start to the week winning an invitation to the Preston Innovations festival, winners week, a free holiday, a few quid, a new pole roller and a nice shiny trophy

***Top Tip, when fishing casters give them a couple of sprays of Amino Scopex before tipping them into water, and also add a few sprays into the water I normally work on 10 sprays for a pint of water ***

Thursday - 22nd June

Rover Match - Peg 24 Twin Oaks

Thursday was my third and final match, of my trip to White Acres, Again it was the Rover match, I was hoping for an early draw but ending up pulling out 48 out 50 anglers. Alot of Lakes were being used in the festival including canal the lake I won from the previous week. After standing there watching all the flyers getting picked, I opted for 24 Twins Oaks, the back lake of Twin Oaks holds a good head of F1s, so decided to get a few pints of casters and fish for F1s instead of carp. Started the match on the hybrid feeder, loaded with 2mm Focus Pellets and Marukyu Black Fishmeal groundbait, it didn't take long for my first fish, a decent 3lb F1, managed to a few more F1s in the next 30 minutes, but felt like it wasn't quite right. Decided to have a look at my 9m caster line shallow, fishing banded caster. My first 7 fish were all small perch, but I stuck with it, after 25 minutes hooked my first F1, again a good fish about 3lb. The next few hours I caught steady on the my shallow line, I could only see the odd carp getting caught so was happy putting decent F1s in the net. Like my first match on Canal the F1s were changing depths, anything from 12 inches to 2.5ft. Going into the last hour my shallow line was fading quickly. The last 45 minutes I really struggled to get a bite, so decided to fish 14.5m shallow and also have a go on the feeder again, to see if they had backed off but didn't have a bite. I Decided to fish on the deck on banded pellet underneath my shallow line, fouled hooked and lost 4 F1s on the run, it was clear the fish were still there at mid depth but had just stopped feeding, I stopped feeding completely and manage to catch another 3 F1s on the deck. With only catching 6 fish in the last hour I feared that my weight wasn't to be enough.

The scales came round and my dad was the best weight with 80 odd pound, my four nets went 145lb 8oz,

Luckily my weight was enough to win the match again!

Martin Stokes