Gary's day

Autumn is here and it was a cold start at Home Farm with a bit of a frost on the ground. It was bright and sunny though so was due to warm up. Out of the bag came peg 7. With the cold overnight and a good bit of cold rainwater going in the lake during the week it could be a hard day

A small carp early on with micros and expander had my hopes up but it was a false dawn. An hour in I had the 1 carp and just a couple of roach, even they were not feeding. As the sun made its way over the trees the lake slowly came to life starting on peg 1 with Mark starting to catch. The sun took a long time to swing round until it hit our end of the lake and my feet were very cold by lunchtime. Mark was still catching and so was Rob now on peg 6 to my right. The middle pegs though were proving a lot trickier - Phil catching the odd roach over on Peg 3 and Tony losing a few carp on Peg 8.

Finally, I had some sun about 2 and started warming up as did the fishing. A swap to a lighter rig helped as the bites were shy, winter bites with some just moving the float. Sadly it was much too late for me and a series of foulhooked fish that fell off did not help.

Mark took out the field with 78lbs 7oz of paste fish followed by Rob with 47lbs and a thanks for coming of 30lbs 4oz for me (but with a big bonus perch of just under 2lbs thrown in). Pic today is Rob at the weigh in.