Gary's day

After a week off on holiday it was a trip to Hall Farm's small lake today which was acting as a stand in for MBL which is very weedy at the moment.  Out of the bag came peg 17 which gave me plenty of reed cover on the inside for later.

Today's goal was all about catching the right fish.  Avoiding the silvers to find the carp was the plan.  At the off I started on the long pole with 4mm pellets.  The plan worked for about 10 minutes and a small half pound carp and then the roach found me.  Time for a change.  A quick try in the margins with paste and sweetcorn had lots of indications from the bait being mobbed by small fish but no proper bites.  So time to try something different and out went a small feeder on the long pole line.  This seems to do the trick and I had a good 90 mins catching small carp.

Phil and Fred to my left were struggling but Mark and Tony on the far side were doing well too with Tony's fish being worth 4 or 5 of mine. And they also had a nice bit of shade which I was jealous of as the day heated up

At the midway it was time to try the margins again which I had been feeding from the off.  This time the small fish seemed to have moved on and when the float went under it tended to be a decent fish on the end of the line.  As the day got hotter and the sun brighter the lake started switching off and the last hour was a real struggle with just the small fish feeding still.  The all out whistle was a welcome relief as it was getting much too hot.  

1st Gary Pickard 37lbs 10oz, 2nd Tony Cruci 20lbs 14oz and 3rd Mark Halverson 20lbs 12oz. Photo today is my peg 17.