Both Clubs juniors met at the venue at 9am with parents frantically unpacking there cars, getting all of the fishing tackle out for the day. It became apparent early on coats were not needed as the sun came out and looked like the rain was going to hold off for what could be a beautiful days fishing for the juniors.
At 9.30am the Juniors 11 – 16 Years of age started to draw their pegs, this was done slightly different from normal and the cadets and juniors would be mixed in together around the lake. When all of the Juniors had finished the draw the cadets then lined up to draw themselves.
Once they had drawn their pegs all of the young anglers headed down to their swims with there parents and frantically started to setup for their days fishing.
Looking around the lake we could see a variety of tactics being setup with some setting poles up short, down the center track and plumbing up the margins. While others were clipping up with method feeders across to the island. The more experienced anglers managed to find time to setup both.
Looking around the fishery it seemed most of the juniors had a variety of baits including Maggots, Pellets, Corn & Luncheon meat. some of the juniors had some Pellets & ground bait that was kindly donated to them from the South West Champs by U-Zit Bait.
Before we knew it setup time was over and the the whistle went for the all in, time had flown by and I had helped my cadet setup and hadn’t wet down his micro pellets yet (Good job he wanted to start on the pole.)
He started short on a top kit +1 fishing 8mm pellets and loose feeding pellets & dead maggots over the top he soon hooked into his first carp, but after this it went very quite and we found rotating the swims picking off a fish on each was the best tactic as the fish seemed to be spooked pretty easily.
Others around the lake were all having the same issue but from what we could see the Young Anglers on the method feeders seemed to be doing well.
With an hour to go a fair few of the cadets had caught a similar number of fish, with this in mind we had been priming the inside edge all day throwing 5 – 10 pellets in at a time. Our cadets & juniors using the poles then started to fish these lines, it still wasn’t great and again the fish were getting spoked easily. We then had a little tactics chat and our juniors wanted to try some different bait we decided to try the Bubblegum match Pellets by U-zit baits, this defiantly made a difference and one of our cadets hooked into 3 carp in quick succession getting him 2nd place on the day.
Overall the day was a great success and the juniors all had a lot of fun, as always these matches wouldn’t be possible with out Matt & Scott’s ( TAA ) organization. A massive thank you to them for once again inviting Summerhayes Juniors to fish there matches.