Brownings Youth Masters Qualifiers

Tingrith Fisheries - Fringe PoolYesterday at Tingrith Fisheries one of the qualifiers for the Browning Youth Masters was bein held here, as its only half an hour a way from me i thought i should give it a go and just see what happens! I had no intention of coming first as i knew that some good anglers would be there, and i honestly thought id come last!When me and mum arrived there we went to the cafe where there were only 4 other anglers! We payed our money and started to have a little chat. It was then my mum realised how little gear i actually have compared to the propper match men with there big holdalls, trolleys, posh boxes etc!With the draw at 9 i was the first to pick my peg, i pulled out number 5! I was happy with this peg as its an end peg so id have abit more water than some of the others...When i got to my peg i got out my bait for the day,1 tin of corn1 tin of luncheon meat4mm expander pellets6mm feed pellets4mm feed pelletspaste1pint of castersand some left over maggots!PLAN OF ATTACKMy plan of attack was to go for the rudd which apparently are all nice fish, average is 5 to 1lb!So i set up a little dibber float, 3lb main line, with a 2lb hook length and size 18 hook, i was going to be fishing with caster on the hook and spraying caster all around at 9.5m out.I had also planned to try abit in the margins for some of the lumps that live here! so i put a hand full and a half of corn in the margins and left it for abit. Which i topped up every half an hour!THE MATCHAs the whistle sounded i started shipping out my pole and fed a hand full of casters, and straight away i had my first rudd, next put in, next rudd, next put in, next rudd! The rudd were feeding as soon as the caster hit the surface! some point the rudd were taking my float aswell!I also had some nice fish which i think were orth, they were bright orange but looked like rudd? Can someone help with this?Anyway. After 2 and a half hours of rudd fishing i decided to try the margin line.First put in next to a small patch of reeds produced a roach of just under a pound. But the next put in produced a small dip, i stuck and there was 12 elastic streaming out of my pole! It must have taken me abit 10mins to land the fish on 3lb line! It was a nice mirror of around 5lb.Next put in produced the same, but a common of around 4lb.Then another common which i lost which looked abit smaller at around 3lb.I then dropped my rig in again, and surely enough after about 10mins my float dipped again and i connected to a nice fish. it didnt feel as big as the others but as it came to the surface i saw it was a nice tench of about 4lb aswell! Chuffed to bits with this i put it back in my keep net!How ever the next put in was completely different, i keep getting what i think were line bites, but i finally connected to fish. When i first hooked it, the fish just plodded around for abit. But then it shot off and tried to get me in the tree opposite me, this fish gave me a lovely fight for around 10-15mins, and when i finally landed it i saw it was a much bigger fish!There was 5mins left of the match, but i couldnt hook another one before the whistle sounded! so i headed off to watch the weigh in. First weight was 42lb something i think the second weight was 70 odd lb the third weight was 24lb and the fourth weight was 32lb i think.Then it came to me. My rudd came to 12lb, and my carp came to 26lb!So i had a total of 38lb 15oz if i remember correctly which gave me 3rd place which i was happy with considering id never fished the lake and everyone else had!Everyone who took part Thanks for taking your time to read my VERY LONG report

Photo's will follow!