Gary's day

A change of venue today, Hall Farm rather than MBL after Wednesday's match on MBL turned into a grueller for most. Today's forecast was 50:50 whether it would rain or not - it was spot on with rain for about half the match! Thankfully though it was pretty mild and the wind forecast did not materialize.

Now the draw bag and out came peg 8 for me. I was not overly happy as I had the peg a couple of months back and really struggled to get past loads of small silvers. With pegs 1 and 2 in it looked an uphill struggle.

I started out on the feeder whilst feeding some maggots on the pole lines and some early indications got the spirits lifted. The first 2 came off as I seemed to be foulhooking them on a feeder, the second got over the net before coming off - nobody likes to see that. Thankfully the next couple of small carp stayed on and I was off the mark. There were a few fish topping and Jeff on peg 10 was getting a few. The bush to my left meant I had no idea what was happening beyond Peter on Peg 7. Time for a try on the pole after an hour or so on the feeder. A roach and then a few chunky gudgeon had me fearing another day of being bitted out. It then went very quiet on the pole line but thankfully the carp had arrived. From then on it was a steady day, not a huge number of bites, however, when the float went under, it was usually a carp. To the left Peter was catching steadily on the feeder and they looked a better stamp and Jeff started catching again towards the end. It looked a close one.

At the weigh in I completely underestimated and my mid-30s guess was miles out with the carp net just going over 50lb. For the end of November the lake fished really well with lots of 20lb+ weights. Photo is Jeff who just pipped Peter to their ongoing 20p side bet.

1st Gary Pickard 51lbs 5oz, 2nd Mark Halverson 38lbs 3oz, 3rd Jeff Pearson 26lbs 13oz and 4th Peter Green 25lbs 12oz.