Gary's day

It was another hot and sunny day at Beggars Hall but this time around it was going to be a lot less windy - ideal conditions for pellet waggler. After a lot of debate before the draw we decided to fish the dam bank including peg 21 which is a real soul breaker - lots of fish but a nightmare to get them out. Thankfully I pulled out peg 16 with Tony being stuck with 21. Having fished this a couple of matches back I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do but since then the water has really dropped and most of us ended up fishing below the usual platforms.

With it being so hot I had been expecting to see fish cruising all over but it was strangely calm with just a few bubbles popping up to let you know something was nearby. I started off on bomb and pellet having seen the bubbles but had nothing to show but a couple of small liners after 30 mins - it was not going to plan. It was time for the pellet wag. It turned out to be a long and hot day but the odd carp showed up in the feed and I managed to tempt a few more by casting at them. The pole was in the rod bag and I was tempted to give it a go as the fish were spooking off the pellet wag but decided against it as every fish I hooked decided it either wanted to charge off to the island or go visit Phil on peg 16. I ended the day with 9 carp for 65lbs dead including a real unit of around 14lbs.

1st Gary Pickard 65lbs, 2nd David Jones 33lbs 12oz and 3rd Mark Halverson 24lbs 7oz.

Today's photo is Mark showing why you don't need many fish to break 20lbs.