Gary's day

Another chilly start with the car reading -4C at the draw but with a warm and dry day forecast. After seeing the Wednesday results a good draw was needed, and that was not peg 19. It was going to be a tough day.

It was a very simple plan: feeders of various types towards the middle; and a waggler line with maggots in case the lake had woken up. The water was a lot more coloured than expected but this was likely down to the many Canadian geese on the lake rather than fish movement.

It was the expected very slow start at our end of the lake but Mark on 16 and Fred on 10 had much better starts with a carp each almost straightaway. An hour and a half in and there were still no signs at our end of the lake with all 5 of us biteless. Fred had had another carp which he was thinking put him at 20lbs and John on 17 also had a bream.

With nothing happening it was time for trying to get a fish of any size and in went a small cage feeder with groundbait and maggot. Finally I had a small bite and a 2oz roach was in the net - blank saved. On the next cast the tip twitch turned into a full wrap around and a carp was on. The little 9ft feeder rod I was using was pushed to its limits but a carp of around 7lb was also in the keepnet.

Sadly the brief flurry of excitement was a false dawn and the next 3 hours produced 3 more small roach for me with no signs of any bigger fish. The rest of our end of the lake was having a worse day with only Rob on peg 21 getting any signs with 1 bite and 1 carp. Down the other end it was strangely quiet after their good start until peg 16 came to life in the last 30 mins.

It was clear that the winner was going to be coming from the other end of the lake today but would it be Fred or Mark? 1st Mark Halverson 41lbs 6oz with 6 carp with 5 coming in the last half hour, 2nd Fred Hunt 25lbs 5oz with 3 carp and 3rd Rob Calderon 9lbs 5oz with 1 carp beating John's bream and tench.