Lawn Farm Fisheries, Elsworth, 16th February 2013

Having an upcoming match in April with the Match Fishing Scene lads at Lawn Farm Fisheries in Cambourne, Cambridge, Mark and decided that this would be venue number two in our 2012 decider competition.  We would be fishing Honeysuckle lake which is the large snake lake at Lawn Farm and neither of us had fished it before.

The pressure would be on Mark to peg back my 1-nil lead after the previous day at Hallcroft Fisheries.  We were both confident of a good day as Lawn Farm hasn't failed to produce great sport.

Checking the Lawn Farm Fisheries website, the previous match in February, peg 25 produced 66lb of fish to a simple bomb and red maggot approach, so this would definitely be part of our tactics today.

Mark chose peg 25 and I opted for peg 24 which would give me some open water to my left.

The Set-Up
After reading the previous match results, the bomb rod came out and I fixed the lightest bomb I had as the lake was only about 15m wide.  The rest of the attack would be with the pole, so the normal 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock swim positions were adopted.  I plumbed up and found the bottom of the far shelf at about 10 metres, depth was 5 foot, the near shelf was top two plus two.

Finally, I picked a margin swim to my left.  Bait was maggots, corn and expander pellets.

The All-In
We were both ready for 9am and decided to fish until 3pm to decide the match.  I opted to feed the right hand swim with a small pole cup and the left hand swim via the kinder pot, dripping in maggots and micro pellets.

The morning passed by without any action and we were both getting frustrated, Lawn Farm normally delivers fish despite the weather.  A local visitor came past and told us we were in the right area for the fish, but no bites...  Around 11pm, my float dipped on the left hand swim, single white maggot and at last my blank was broken with a lovely skimmer.  No sooner had I landed my fish, Mark hooked and landed an even better skimmer... maybe the sunshine and slight breeze had turned the fish on?

Both Mark and I had a solitary small roach and the bites dried up again, this was very unusual?

My float dipped again and the fish took off, this was no skimmer... It had to be a carp!  It was and it was clearly foul hooked the way is was ripping around the swim.  The first sight on the surface confirmed it was hooked in the fin, so I played it a lot gentler and finally managed to net it.  The 4lb carp would be my best fish of the day and a bit lucky to be fair.

The day passed by and we simply had no bites.  Nothing on either line, far shelf, near shelf or margin.  We both ended up casting around our swims with the bomb rods.

With an hour left to go my tip flew round and I landed a skinny, perfectly scaled carp.  The hour quickly passed and the alarm on the phone sounded the ended of the match.

The Result
A disappointing day, with an estimated 7lb in weight, but it was a win, giving me the 2012 Trophy.  Mark congratulated me on the win by catapulting 12mm pellets at me, well, he had been firing them at me for some time to be fair! ;-)

Conclusion
We really didn't know what went wrong, the fish simply weren't in front of us.  Lawn Farm is still a great fishery, the owner is a lovely guy and there were plenty of anglers on the other lakes.  Looking forward to the MFS Champion's League match there in April.

More Pictures

Peg 24, Home for the day
Mark on Peg 25
The foul-hooked carp
Final fish of the day...

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