Gary's day

Today was the Triple Cup versus Sawbridgeworth and Abbey Cross with Sawbo hosting this year at their club lake. It was going to be an interesting day. The lake is full of fish but carp were going to dominate the weigh sheets. As each carp counts as 10lbs that gives you an idea of how big they are in the lake.

Out of the bag came peg 14 for me. On arriving at the swim the first impression was not good. I was in a small channel off the main lake with pegs either side and only 11m wide. I had an inviting lilly bed stretching across most of the channel to my right but it screamed lost fish.

My plan was to fish to the left and hope the fish ignored dashing into the lillies. With only limited water in front of me set up was simple: a couple of pole rigs and a small method feeder.

At the all in I fed a few micros and dropped in with an expander on the hook looking for a few skimmers to get team points on the board. The float dipped and the strike was meant with non-bream like resistance as a carp charged into the lillies and was gone taking a bit of my rig with it.

About 20 mins later the float went under again and another carp was on running left this time towards the main lake. My left hand neighbour also struck into a carp at the same time. After a few minutes things felt a bit odd and we found ourselves tangled as our carp had crossed. In fact it was a perfect hook to hook connection.

Thankfully the carp started to stay on the hook and a few were getting to the landing net. To my left the anglers in the main lake were also starting to hook and sometimes land carp. A couple of tench and decent skimmers were a nice break from turbocharged carp for me.

By the midway point I had 5 carp but bites were slowing and it was only carp now with no signs of silvers. And far too many were now deciding to charge round the point of the channel straight into a sunken tree. I could hear that others on the lake were having similar issues with an expense crunching noise at one point echoing over the lake

My battle with my left hand neighbour was tight with us seeming to take turns in getting a carp. In the end it was a 9 carp each draw but with my silvers edging me in front. It was a case of far too many lost today for me trying to keep them out of the snags. An enjoyable but frustrating day.

With a lot of carp being caught and plenty lost we did not have a clue as to who had won. We knew we had done pretty well with some decent results but you can only ever see a few pegs on this lake with its twists and turns. In the end our consistency meant we ended up with a comfortable looking win on paper but a few carp either way could have swung it. Bishop's Stortford did it again with 43 points to Abbey Cross on 59 and Sawbridgeworth on 63. And well done to Rob Calderon who ended up with 22 carp