Gary's day

It was back to Beggar's Hall today. With a forecast for a day of wind and rain I left the pole at home and brought a brolly instead. It was going to be mild though so we hoped for a few fish.

With winter being here I was wanting a peg near the island but it was not to be. Peg 19 was my home for the day and where I seemed to spend most of last winter's matches.

A first hour on cage or maggot feeder finally found me a couple of small perch so I was not going to blank. And they seemed to be the only couple of fish caught down our end of the lake.

90 mins in I popped my head from under the brolly to see if Phil on peg 18 had caught anything to find him playing a carp. After a couple of hours Rob on peg 21 also had a small carp and suddenly my rod bent round with a carp taking a liking to my wafter. A careful few minutes later a 10lb common was in the net.

It then went very quiet with no more signs until about 1 when I had 2 good bream in quick succession on sweetcorn. But then it went quiet again all the way until 10 mins to go when Rob had a better carp and a small one followed for me a few minutes later as if they had been swimming through our 2 swims.

It soon became clear that we had been at the wrong end of the lake although Darren had done well with 5 carp on peg 22 and Phil had managed 3 more carp in the last half hour.

The pegs up by the island had the better day with quite a few carp being caught. In the end Mark made no mistake from peg 10 to win with 71lbs 14oz of mostly smaller carp, Fred coming second off peg 13 with 50lbs 7oz and John Todd taking 3rd with 47lbs 15oz. Picture today is my peg before the all in - it was raining by the time we started weighing in.