Wednesday, April 20th – Fish ‘o’ Mania Qualifier

So it was here, the first Fish ‘O’ Mania qualifier of the year. I always get excited on qualifiers for these big-money matches. They can be a bit of a lottery, but if you draw a decent peg you can be in with a chance.

For the last four years I have been trying to get a ticket for Partridge Lakes without any luck, but this year I managed to get on both qualifiers. With 200 anglers fishing it, and about 30 reserves hoping to get a ticket, it was a sellout. The beauty of Partridge is that the match could be won on any lake.FB_IMG_1461658342569-01.jpeg

My home for the day was Peg 42 on Covey 2. The Coveys are the lakes the fishery uses in all its open matches, so I had a good idea of how I would fish the peg.

FB_IMG_1461657312678.JPG

With all the pressure on the lake, I knew catching shallow would be a lot harder than the previous day. The peg had a lot of reeds to my left and I could see a few fish knocking the stick-ups. I knew this would be the best area of the peg to get a few bites.

At the all-in I decided to try and nick an early fish from the reeds. I went over to my left with just a big piece of worm on and within minutes I was into a decent fish. Following a hard fight I landed a mirror of about 7lb, which is really big for the Coveys. The average size is 1lb to2lb.

I went over to the same area and fed nothing again and a few minutes later I got another bite. This time the fish headed straight for the reeds and I lost it. I decided to rest that swim for a while. Because of all the commotion of losing that fish it would have spooked any others in that area of the peg.

I went over to the far bank but there were no signs of fish.

Like the previous day, I had been loose feeding a few casters on my shallow line. I had a look on that line an hour into the match, with the hope of catching a few ide or small chub. I had a good run of ide and put about 15lb of them in my nets before they moved out of the peg.

I decided I would focus on my left-hand margin for the rest of the match because this was the only area of the peg that I could constantly get bites from.

I ended up with 54lb 12oz, which was only good enough for 4th on the lake, and I just missed out on a section win. I had a really mixed bag of ide, chub and F1s but I never felt there was the volume of F1s on the peg to challenge for a place to qualify. It was still a great day out and a decent weight looking at the others on the lake. One qualifier down, three to go! DSC_0006-01.JPG


X