It was a trip to Beggars Hall this week with the day being due to be cold but dry. Out of the bag came peg 10 for me; not a bad winter peg but the other side of the island has been better so far this winter.

The plan today was simple - casting as close to the trees on the island as I dared and waiting for a bite. The target was 6 bites and, hopefully, 6 fish. Seeing the water being so clear had me thinking that was optimistic. It was going to be a day on the tip although I did set up a waggler just in case. The first hour had me searching around with a bomb with bread, corn and meat for no signs. It was not such a slow start for Mark, Rob and Steve who each had a carp about an hour in. John to my left then lost one. A swap to a hybrid feeder did not help and by 12.30 I had not seen a sign of life in my peg. By now Mark was on 3 fish.

A swap back to bomb and bread finally got me a couple of liners and then a bite. You guessed it, it came off after the hard work of getting it away from the tree branches.

The next hour was quiet for me but Mark added another couple of carp and was easily leading unless the other end of the lake was fishing well. About 1.30 the tip started moving a bit from liners and I had another bite. This time the fish made the net and a blank was avoided. Another quiet spell followed until getting lots of liners in the last half hour but no bites. It got so bad I was stood behind my box to make sure I did not strike at them. With a couple of minutes to go the tip went round and another carp of around 10lbs went in the net. That was it, the carp had shown up but too late for me.

At the weigh in Mark had clearly won it with 5 fish but they were on the smaller side for Beggars. Rob was admitting to 15lb with one chunky mirror - it went 20lb on the scales!

Mark's 5 fish went 32lbs 3oz for the win followed by Rob's monster at 20lbs 1oz with my 2 coming in at 16lbs 9oz .

Photo today is Rob's 20lb - you don't need many bites for a decent weight at Beggars at the moment.