Rob's day

At Taylor's Car Park Lake this morning in a rearranged match – Abbey Cross kindly offering us the lake as Beggar's Hall is still very low which would have caused issues finding 17 or 18 swims able to place keepnets in properly.

Now officially Autumn with much lower temperatures today with some showers. With our nine and Abbey's eight on today a lot of swims in – I drew peg 11 – a good peg with some success recently. It was almost the same depth from the margins out to the lilies at 11 meters – so just a couple of rigs to fish maggots, corn and worm, hopefully for bream and the odd F1. Also, a short whip to start and try and get a few early fish in the net. I had a few small perch and roach on the whip but these quickly died out so onto the long pole. No more bites until three hours in when a quick dip of the float brough a small skimmer of around a pound.

Elsewhere a few were fish coming out caught – mostly bream – Bill was on about three good bream across on peg 21 and next door Alan Fox on 22 also had a couple. Peter next to me started slowly but had a couple of bream later on. News was that Graham further down had one bream and a carp. Martin on the point swim (9) was busy catching some good quality roach and also had a good bream. The only other person I could see was Fred on 18 and I saw he had landed at least three bream – on the feeder I think.

With a couple of hours left another bite on worm and a good F1 hooked – straight in the lily bed but managed to free the fish from these when the hook pulled! Into the last 45 minutes and no more fish so started packing the odd top kit away thinking mine might be the weight discarded when I noticed some bubbles around the float (had been feeding groundbait throughout the day). Seconds later the float disappeared and I hooked a decent fish. Guiding it away from the pads the fish (I thought a big bream) it managed to pick up a ton of weed, making playing and getting the fish up difficult. After ten minutes or so I managed to get the fish and weed close in and could see a swirl under the weed so still on. Eventually I saw a head and managed to scoop up the weed and the fish. No bream but a carp around 15lb!

At the weigh in my 2lb of silvers added to the carp went 17lb 11oz enough for fourth place. Keith Hicks on peg 25 topped with 22lb 8oz with some nice bream, Bill second with 19lb 14oz and Fred third with 19lb 11oz. Martin completed the frame with 16lb 8oz including 12lb of roach.

Teamwise a good performance from BS – winning 78 points to 54 – our lowest weight 5lb 11oz
Thanks again for Abbey Cross for allowing us to use the lake and helping with the weigh in.