Gary's day
We were at Hall Farm today for the Breathe Easy charity match. After a few words from the Bishop's Stortford mayor it was time for the draw and out came peg 20 for me. What seems to be my traditional half way along the high bank.
After walking past the car park end pegs and seeing all the fish moving around in them, those of us down the other end thought we were fishing for third at best.
With a few fishing moving around on top I set up a shallow mugging rig on the pole and also a pellet waggler. With a couple of edge rigs for paste or corn and another rig for in front in about 7ft - I was done just as the all in sounded.
It was a very slow start with no signs on the 7ft swim and the cruising carp seemed to be spooking away from loose feed out long. Mark opposite on peg 4 got off to a good start with an early carp and it sounded like the pegs to my right were catching too from the splashing.
I finally started getting a few bites fishing out long and shallow with one in the net after about 45 mins. I then had a horrendous hour losing fish for no apparent reason. Finally another made it to the net but I was falling behind Fred and Peter in favoured pegs 1 and 2.
The rest of the day was pretty much a case of trying shallow and mugging the odd carp away from the feed. The edges never kicked in. With about 45 mins to go I latched into what was to be my last fish with a mirror of about 11lbs making it to the net. All I could then do was watch Peter and Fred still catching the odd carp and John was also making a bit of a late run from peg 7.
It looked like it was going to be pretty close over on the Low Bank with Fred and Peter being pretty much fish for fish and looking to be the winners. Over on our bank it was going to be down to how well the higher numbers fished and there had been lots of splashing sounds during the day from that direction.
The match ended up very close with one decent fish covering the top 5. I managed to nudge into the lead with 45lbs with Fred on 41lbs, Alan on 40lbs, Peter on 39lbs and Graham with 37lbs. Well done all and we managed to raise around £500 for Breathe Easy.