Gary's day

Today was a trip back to Home Farm's small lake. Thankfully the predicated day of drizzle did not materialize but the wind was cold. Out of the bag came peg 3 for me in the middle of the lake. The carp had certainly followed the wind and Tony's peg 1 was lifting with them. We all thought we knew where the winner would come from today.

The water was still painfully low and I had just over 18 inches at the deepest. More pole rigs were trimmed down!

The first hour passed quickly with no signs on either expanders or maggots and I was not alone. Despite there being small roach topping at our end of the lake and carp going nuts near Tony only Rob had a couple of small roach. Another 30 mins in Darren finally had a carp on and a decent 8lber waddled into his net. After a couple of hours I finally had a roach - blank saved. Surely a carp would be next any moment?

Tony was having a very frustrating day with the carp ignoring his bait but after losing one he finally had one in the net around the halfway point.

Despite trying all over my peg I never seemed to manage more than 1 bite in a swim before I needed to move to get another bite. The rest of the lake was fishing very hard too and the last hour was pretty much biteless for us all with Phil losing a carp later on. My dozen or so roach were getting me nowhere today.

And that is how we finished - Darren's early carp making him a run away winner today with 9lbs 10oz, with Tony's carp coming in at 2lbs 15oz for second and then Rob's net of bits 3rd with 2lbs 2oz. Photo today is Darren.