Gary's day

Today was back to Home Farm and it's small lake. It was a little cooler than of late with a breezy but dry day forecast.

It was peg 1 for me today so a bit of long pole work to start and hopefully the margins full of carp later on. The start was slow but steady with a few bites coming on 6mm pellets and after an hour I had 4 smaller carp in the net. Fred at the other end of the lake sounded like he had had a good start but the middle pegs were fishing hard.

After that first hour my peg just seemed to switch off and the odd cruising carp and patch of bubbles I had seen disappeared. Long, short, middle, on the deck and shallow were all tried and the only bites were from roach. With 90 minutes to go the odd carp showed on the top. They were very spooky but a couple took the pellet I dropped in front of them.
Then they disappeared as fast as they surfaced.

A try in the middle on corn found a couple of roach but nothing bigger. Phil in the middle sounded like he was now getting a few bites but the trees blocked me seeing him. With 20 mins to go another try down the margin finally produced a bite on paste which I missed. Next put in though I hit that bite. I snuck 1 more carp before the end. The carp here really seem to know typical match times as they were all down the edge as we were packing up!

It was a very close finish and the few silvers I popped in the net may have made the difference. 1st Gary Pickard 43lbs 6oz, 2nd Phil Whitmill 41lbs 3oz and 3rd Fred Hunt 18lbs 2oz. Picture today is Fred with a very scaly mirror.