After already fished Innishcarra a few times in the year and hearing reports of it still fishing it tits off i set myself up for a good day of speed fishing (mistake No2) and in turn hoped for some quality bags of Roach with the odd Bream thrown in for good measure. I chose to fish Rooves Bay on the practise day as this had been the hardest of the sections during previous festivals with the Graveyard being the better. To put it no better way, the fishing there was shite ! At the draw the next morning no one wanted to pull Rooves out of the bag and thankfully i pulled a peg i had fished already earlier in the year on the Graveyard stretch, so going on previous experience and local reports i figured i would set up for catching around 250 fish in a 4hour period, this can be done in Cork usually with no problems at all.
I didn't pay much attention to my Slider line (mistake No3) as I'd set up my pole line at 10m with a 6m whip and then a 5m whip for when i got them in close. I didn't have a massive array of top kits available as i was using my new Browning Z12 and was waiting for top kits to arrive.
This didn't bother me too much as i just set up a few positive rigs at a full top 3 deep (mistake No4), the Z12 top 3 is the equivalence to a Daiwa top 4. What i should have done was to use my Daiwa G8 with a selection of top 5's set up so i could fish a 13m line at 5m deep and waited until all my sections had arrived before using the Z12, but being a new toy an all, i had to have a play...
After 30 seconds of the 'All in' i looked at Tommy Lawton and commented on how slow the fishing was, he agreed ! 4 hours on and i had caught fk all and finished a joint last in my section!
I leaned a massive lesson on this match and that was to NEVER assume anything......
