Gary's day

Sunday saw us at Home Farm's small lake with a forecast of possible thunderstorms and rain for much of the day. Before the off we had sunny skies and carp cruising around but come the all in whistle the clouds had gathered and fish disappeared.

I was in the middle of the lake today on peg 3 so with plenty of room but not one of the favoured end pegs. It was a very slow start for most of us with only Rob in peg 5 catching (or at least hooking) a few fish. The water was well down after our long dry spell.

It was proving very frustrating. I could see fish were near my pellet feed from the bubbles and plumes of mud but I could not get a bite. Trying shallow got me one bite but it quickly fell off after charging across the lake.

After a couple of hours I finally started getting the odd bite on paste but was missing too many bites and was having issues with foulhooked fish in the very shallow water. At least I was off the mark. Phil and Tony were also still struggling and Rob was still catching.

A try down the edge early when I saw some signs of fish did not work so it was back long on paste. Another try in the margins finally got me a carp on corn but the bites were not coming. I decided to try paste shorter near the tree to my right on hopefully a less silty bottom and that seemed to work. I had a good run of decent sized carp with 90 mins to go but then I went back to bubbles and no bites with most fish coming off. A very frustrating finish for me. Rob was also slowing down but Phil was starting to catch a few.

It was pretty obvious who was going to win today's match but not so clear on second and Phil had had a good finish. Given that Rob seemed to have a fish on every time I looked his way we all thought he had a lot more but still comfortably won with 71lbs with me just edging out Phil by a fish with 36lbs to Phil's 32 lbs. Today is my peg just before the off with the clouds rolling in.