Gary's day

Today was the first match of the 2023/4 season with a trip to Hall Farm. After a very hot week the weather forecast was looking grim with thunderstorms forecast. Thankfully, despite quite a few rumbles of thunder in the afternoon, we were spared a drenching.

Out of the draw bag came peg 10 for me. Not a surprise as I can't remember the last time I was in the low numbers. With the hot weather, fishing on the deck was off the cards. Peg 10 is a top 3 deep at 4 sections. So a couple of rigs for down the edges and a shallow rig had me set up quickly.

I had a great start just tapping in a few 6mm pellets and waiting for a bite. An hour in I had about 15lb in the net. But I kept hearing the odd splashes from Mark on 8 and Tony on 12. With bushes either side of me all I could see was Phil on 26 who seems to be very quiet for sitting on a flyer. And so the day continued, shallow was a waste of time as they were not quite interested. Swapping to paste down one edge and corn and micros down the other kept them coming with the odd quieter spell. A plague of lost fish with hook pulls was going to come back to bite me though.

At the end it had been a busy match with Mark sounding to have had a similar day from the splashing next door. At the weigh in it was ridiculously close. I had 116lbs to Mark's 114lbs but we were both taken out by Phil, who had NOT been having a quiet day, weighing in 123lbs.