Gary's day

When you get to the draw at 8.15 and think you had better start slapping on the factor 50 you know it is going to be hot one. And it was, getting back to the car afterwards showed 39C on the dash.

Back to the day. After 3 matches being fished over the last week at Hall Farm today was always going to be an odd one - pulling out peg 10 was not what I wanted on what was going to be a difficult day. There were 3 pegs on the lake I did not want and this was smack bang in the middle of them. But, if it fished rock hard, maybe ....
Everything got set up although, with the number of fish swimming up and down the middle it looked like it would be a day shallow. A quick 3lb F1 along the edge whilst I primed a shallow swim got my hopes but it was not to be. 4 hours later, after trying everything I could think of to nail one of the cruising F1s and carp, saw me with lots of silvers but only 2 more few carp - things were not going to plan. A final flurry of carp down the margins on paste was my get out of jail card but it was much too little and too late and a run of 5 fish in a row falling off was to be costly.

Well done to Roger who managed just over 93lbs on the other side of the lake - I could see most of the fish trying to take him to the next peg along. It was a tight finish in the middle of the pack with only a couple of fish separating a number of us for 3rd.

Spot the man who has just drawn peg 2!