Gary's day

Today was the last match of the season which saw us at a sunny and warm Hall Farm. With a few warmer nights beforehand hopefully the fish would be feeding. Out of the bag came peg 2 for me, a great draw with the weather warming up.

The plan was going to be starting on micros and expander on the pole and building up a couple of maggot swims for later. As well as a couple of pole rigs I also dusted off a waggler rod in case the carp and F1s wanted to come shallow out of pole range. A few fishing topping before the all in suggested they might come shallow.

It was a steady start with a small F1 in the net in the first 15 mins getting me off the mark. I had a couple more F1s then the expander swim went a bit funny as I lost a couple of fish on the trot. At this stage not a lot was happening elsewhere in the lake with only Phil on peg 6 seeming to have caught.

A try on the waggler got me bite straight away but only a small rudd and then a couple more rudd before they disappeared. A try back on the expander line did not work and my other pole line that I had fed with maggots was also full of rudd.

Before I knew it we were a couple of hours in and I was stuck catching rudd. A try back on the expander line produced a couple more F1s but it was slow going. Fred to my right was having a nightmare having just lost a big carp whilst trying to get a bite from anything. At the far end on peg 12 Mark was on 4 carp and I suspected they were bigger than my F1s.

A quick try on the method feeder whilst I had something to eat produced a decent carp but it was just the one bite. There were now quite a few carp cruising on the top - on the other side of the lake of course and showing no interest in the odd maggot I catapulted towards them.

Upping the feed on the pole maggot swim only produced more rudd so it was the expander swim or nothing. When that produced a rudd on the next try and then nothing things were not looking good. I then added a pole section to go to about 10m and that did the trick. Not quick but the bites were carp or F1. I reckoned I had about 50lbs so it would be close if Mark had kept catching.

The late flurry of fish was going to be vital as Mark had been catching a few more. 1st Gary Pickard 54lbs 11oz, 2nd Mark Halverson 42lbs 7oz with 10 carp and 3rd Phil Whitmill 8lbs 3oz with a couple of carp just beating Tony by 3oz. Picture today is me with a few of the obliging F1s.