Draycote flat calm

This years Barclays National was on draycote again and the reports were that it wasn't fishing that week. On practice day there was a bright sunshine and a cold wind which kept the fish down. The surface of the water was littered with buzzer shucks so the fish my have had a good feed last night. John Clarke was my boat partner and we had a good day motoring around looking for the best spots. Toft shallows was doing well and it appeared that the better fish were held there. On competition day Paul Ravenscroft and i headed straight there and were surprised that not many boats had followed us. We started well and had 4 fish in the first hour. They were not as big as yesterday so we decided to go searching out in the middle one the shoals for some better fish. There was a little more cloud today but mostly flat calm. The fish however were moving but we struggled to find anything they wanted.

After a few hours of that we moved to near the boat dock were there were quite a few fish rising nearer the bank. paul found the method with a team of buzzers cast at a rising fishing, pulled then left static resulting in some vicious takes. My leader was a bit long and i was fishing a bit but after Paul had his limit i borrowed his rod and finished off. Good teamwork! They were only smaller fish though and the winning team was Clearing Services who had found the bigger fish on Hensborough Bank. Vernon Beak had 4 for 9.4 an Dave Rumball 4 for 9.2