Angling Trust Match - Barford Lakes

Even though Norwich is 3hrs drive, entry to this match was a no brainer as your £20.00 'entry fee' was actually your membership money to join the Angling Trust !
Andy Meadows had also decided to enter and we decided to take the wives and make a weekend of it in Norwich. We travelled over on Friday afternoon and stayed in Norwich City Centre on Friday night. We went relatively steady with the beer as we didn't fancy being too ill the next day !
The big dilemma for us was that we had never seen Barford before so we would be reliant on local info from the likes of Bob Bradford. I always like to fish a peg how I read it, however Barford seems to be slightly different in the fact that if you do something different from the norm, it doesn't tend to work.
I was in the Ultima team and my captain for the day was Andy May. There were 5 lakes in and due to the poor performance of Colton Lake in the Fisho qualifier 3 days before, this was where nobody wanted to be. Captains were dispatched to a room where sections were drew, and guess what - I was on Colton !!! There was then a further draw made for pegs and I ended up on peg 20 which is more or less in the middle of the far bank of the lake. I was advised to fish caster up in the water anything from 2ft to 5ft deep (the lake is 12 ft deep) with red maggot on the hook and in the margin to an edge of a reed bed which was on my left.
Bait was 4pts casters, 4 tins corn, 2 pts 4mm Barford pellets and 1/2 pt red maggots (for the hook).
Upon arrival at my peg, the sun was shining and there was a nice ripple on the water from the left to right breeze. I made up 3 shallow rigs at varying depths between 2ft and 5ft for fishing up in the water at 14.5 mtrs. I plumbed up my margin against the reeds to my left and found it to be 5ft deep ! - 2 rigs were made up for here. I was fairly optimistic as there were plenty of fish moving about in open water.
At the all in, I went straight out to 14.5 mtrs with a 3ft deep rig and double maggot on the hook. I flicked in about 10 casters and the elastic came ripping out of the pole. 10 mts later and a 7lb carp was in the net. Next drop in, the elastic ripped out again and another 7lb carp was safely landed. So, 20 mins in and I had 14lb in the net - I was gonna do 150lb and win the whole match.
What happened next was.............................not alot ! The sun shone more brightly, the wind dropped slightly and nearly every carp had come up into the first 1 ft of water with no interest in feeding whatsoever. I persevered with up in the water for the next 2 hours, constantly changing depths and feeding patterns to try and entice some carp to feed. About half way through the match, Sarah (from Barford) came round and said 3 carp was winning the lake and some people were blanking or only had one. This forced me to carry on up in the water for another 30 fruitless mins before I decided to go down the margin with 2 hours of the match left.
It was obvious after a while that there was nothing feeding down the edge but I had no other option as the fish in the open water were now doing some serious sunbathing.
The remaining one hour saw me have one bite and one fish from the edge (another 7lber) and so at the weigh in I totalled 3 carp for 21lb. The lake was won with 64lb (9 carp) and there were just too many people who picked up one else 2 more carp than myself so I got pushed down to 12th out of 14th on the lake - very disappointing.
Back at the Barford site, everyone was discussing there days fishing and Andy had also had a nightmare with a snag on railway Lake (another poor draw). It was quite funny though when said he was concerned that the MP Martin Salter had nearly beat him. What's funny about this you ask - well Andy has an £800.00 Rive and Martin Salter has one of those blue plastic Shakespeare boxes LOL.
All in all it was a disappointing day fishing wise as I really wanted to draw on the Match or Pleasure lake. HOWEVER, the night out in Norwich was good, Barford is an excellent fishery and most importantly the crack was excellent.

This Sunday, it's the start of the Gedling Pairs at Makins and I am fishing this with Mick Lees. We are reigning champs from last year when we scooped over £700.00 in prize money so here's hoping for more of the same.

Mark