Gary's day
Today was our rescheduled Xmas match arriving between a week of wet weather and the next cold snap. Thankfully it was a dry if rather breezy day. The lake is pretty fair with each peg having its day. Out of the bag came peg 8 for me - towards the top end with Phil and David opposite me and Mark to my left. With some room to my right I was pretty happy with the draw.
As the lake is so shallow (about 3 ft) it is an out and out pole venue, however, with the high winds about 7 sections is all that could be fished with any sort of control - even then the odd gust had me letting the pole blow round rather than risk a break.
With the good head of silvers here I started out on micros and expanders to be a bit more selective as you need a lot of roach to match a carp. 30 mins in without a sign (or at least one I could see in the wind) meant it was Plan B time - out with the maggots for anything swimming. Things then started coming together with a couple of small carp to kick things off and avoid a blank. Up in the low numbers Jeff and Tony were pulling a few fish together with it being a bit slower down our end. With nothing more to show but a few small roach and the wind really blowing it was time to try a quick go on a maggot feeder and a cup of coffee to warm back up. Well that did not work so it was a question of slogging it out on the pole - setting a trap and waiting for a bite. Slowly they started coming but so did they for Phil and Peter on the other side and Mark next to me. And I could see Phil's and Peter's were a better stamp. At the all out it was going to be close but we all thought we were fishing for second behind Jeff who had been catching steadily all day.
At the weigh in my 9 carp and bits went just over 35lbs for a win but it was very close and one fish amongst the top 4 would have made all the difference.
1st Gary Pickard 35lbs 2oz, 2nd Jeff Pearson 31lbs 15oz, 3rd Peter Green 31lbs 2oz and 4th Mark Halverson 30lbs 12oz.
Photo today is us before the draw with Peter handing around some of his famous sloe gin.