Chris Vandervleit proved every peg has its day after a match win at Lake John Fishery from an area he wouldn’t normally fancy.

I have always said that there is not a bad peg at Lake John Fishery; there are some I definitely prefer not to draw but every peg on this venue has its day. For the third round of the seeded pairs competition I drew peg 41, which was certainly one of the pegs I would have preferred not to have found myself on! My partner for the series was Geoff Penny and he had drawn peg 10, an area with a lot of form. With this in mind my target weight was 10lb for good points.

Peg 41 is one of the deepest pegs on the venue (approximately 7ft on the long pole) and target species are normally roach. For some reason the lake’s skimmers and bream seem to avoid the area, probably because it’s in a corner. However, with a cold wind blowing the peg offered a bit more shelter from the elements.

After plumbing around I decided to fish slightly to my left at 11.5 metres. Here I fed Bait-Tech’s new Special G Dark groundbait, squatts and dead red maggots. This was my long pole line. I also fed three short pole swims. The first was a loose fed caster swim 4m out in front of me where it was 6ft deep. I also fed some groundbait and casters six metres to my right, next to a small clump of rushes in 4ft of water, and finally a swim to my left with groundbait and dead red maggots in about 6ft of water.

Rigs for the day were AS1 floats on 0.12mm Supplex main line with 0.10mm hooklenghts and size 18 Drennan Silverfish Maggot hooks. I used a 0.3g float in the shallowest swim, and 0.5g for the other two lines which were the same depth. The long line rig was an AS6 0.8g with the same lines and hook.

At the start of the match I cupped in four balls of groundbait on the long line and a couple of balls on my left and right lines. In each ball was a pinch of dead red maggots. Hook bait was single dead red maggot.

After about 15 minutes of fishing my long pole line I’d caught three small roach and a small skimmer for about eight ounces. A look closer in on my 4m line produced a couple of hybrids about 8oz each, then a foul-hooked skimmer of about 2lb graced the net. Very welcome!

Back on the long pole produced a few small skimmers and after an hour and a half of I had reached my target weight. A look on my short left-hand line straight away produced a 3lb bream. This really built my confidence as the lake was fishing hard by Lake John’s standards. The rushes swim also produced a few roach, hybrids and skimmers and for the rest of the match I alternated between all of these lines, nicking odd fish.

At the weigh in my pairs partner Geoff had weighed in 22lb 8oz of waggler caught skimmers for 7th in the match and my 29lb 8oz gave me a surprising match win and mega points in the league.