Drummonds Dub/Hartleton lake 28/04/2012

With the poor weather of late i was not expecting great results today. Plan for today was going to be groundbait feeder line and a pole line about 13 metres out. The 13 metre line was to be fed with chopped worm and caster as i felt this maybe the way to go bearing in mind it was going to be a day where you needed to catch anything that swims just to put some sort if weight in the net.
Arrived at the lake in plenty if time for the draw and eventually when held i drew out peg 4 which was a peg i fancied as it is one of the pegs that normally get pleasure fished allot. got to the peg and the water was chocolate brown , i didn't know how this was going to affect the fishing as I've never fished it when it was as coloured up as this.

I set up the usual feeder rig starting with the largest Drennan feeder i had just to get some bait in the swim then i would put a smaller version on as the match progressed. Reel line was 6lb Guru and the hooklenght was 2.6lb WB Clarke matchteam to a size 16 hook.
Out at 13 metres i had probably 5 feet of water so i set up a 1 gramme float to combat the tow and the windy conditions, this was set up on 4.6lb mainline to a 2.6lb hooklenght and a size 16 hook.
At the whistle i dropped in two large cups of chopped worm and caster on the pole line and whilst this was settling i went out on the feeder casting every couple of minutes to build the swim up. Anyway 2 hours in and not even a touch on the feeder i had a go on the pole line fishing a small section of worm on the hook and had a bite second put in this turned out to be a small roach so at least i was off the mark. I stayed on this line for another 45 minutes and with no more bites i decided to really attack the feeder line and for the next 30 minutes just continually cast bait in to the swim. And i started to notice fish topping over my baited area these where good sized fish to also i started to get line bites every put in. As the time past i was still getting liners but no bites (I'll explain my thoughts on why this was happening later). I decide to open up a tin of corn and fish it on a hair rig and just sit on it and wait, and almost immediately i had a cracking bite which result in a hard fighting tench around the 4-5lb mark but then nothing but liners again. Over the next hour or so until the end of the match i had 2 more fish Bream around the 2lb mark and just before the whistle blew i had a cracking bite which broke me. Luckily it didn't cost me and i still ended up winning the match with 8lb 1oz second place was very close behing with 7lb 3oz and everybody apart from one other angler had fish. So yes you could say it fished hard, my theory on this is that the particles in the water colouring it up made it almost impossible for the fish to find the hookbait, they could find the bed of bait laid down but nit the hookbait, which is why I'm guessing more liners than bites, because I'm sure there were allot if fish out in front of me.