Gary's day

After a cold and wet week we were heading to Beggar's Hall today. The recent Wednesday match had been patchy so we were expecting it to be tough.

With 2 pegs left in the bag and all the ones I fancied having been drawn a trip to peg 22 was not what I was hoping for. With the water being so low I ended up putting my box below the platform which gave me a bit of help keeping fish from the right margin's bushes should I hook anything. What this meant though is I could not see another sole with only Phil's pole occasionally lifting above the bushes.

It was a very slow start and with not even a nuisance small perch on maggots - it was not looking good. After a bit over an hour I finally had a bite on the method feeder and a good carp of around 10lbs was in the net. The pole proved a waste of time for me but a few of the others caught on it especially Mark on peg 10 and Darren on peg 19.

By searching around the peg with a method feeder I slowly ticked up a few more bites and by 1.30 I had 5 carp in the net and was doing a lot better than I expected.

I then made the fatal mistake of putting in another net and que a biteless 2 hours. A final smaller carp with about 20 mins to go was my sixth and final bite of the day.

I felt that I had done OK from my peg but was expecting to have been thoroughly thrashed from the other end of the lake as that seems to fish better as we get into winter. On sticking my head above the bank and wandering along it became clear that the favoured pegs had done OK but not run away with it.

It was a lot closer than I was expecting with less than 6lbs (one carp) separating the first 4. Mark's final carp on the whistle and Kevin's lost carp made the difference to 1st and 2nd with Mark on 52lbs and Kevin on just under 50lbs. And I needed 1 more fish as Darren pipped me to 3rd with 46lbs 12oz (including 3 bream) to my 46lbs 3oz. Picture today is peg 22 during a sunny spell.