Gary's day

Today was a trip to Wickham Hall with a wet finish forecast but a sunny start. Out of the bag came peg 13 for me between Phil in the current flyer of peg 12 and Peter on 14.

It was going to be 3 lines for me today: short on a whip for small fish; out at 13m in the deeps for some better fish; and a small cage feeder. At the start in went a good half dozen balls of groundbait on the long line and I started short for some small fish. Half an hour in I was biteless when a month back I would have barely got the float in the water without being mobbed by small fish. Autumn is well and truly here.

The rest of the lake was also fishing hard with Peter owning up to one possible bite. So it was out long. An hour in I finally had a small roach and the blank was avoided. And then another couple but the swim then died. By giving the long line a rest a few bites kept coming even though I caught nothing on the other lines.

Mark over on peg 5 seemed to be the only other person catching some small fish with nothing bigger showing. Phil had a couple of the small chub midway through but the flyer was not flying today.

The rain that started half way through seemed to upset the fish as bites got fewer and fewer with the last 30 mins being biteless for me. It turned into a day of hard work for 60 or so small fish with the odd bonus chublets.

Had we not been spread around the lake today's weigh in would have been very quick as not a lot was caught with none of the bream and only one small carp showing up. 1st Mark Halverson 6lbs 13oz, 2nd Gary Pickard 4lbs 1oz and 3rd Phil Whitmill 11oz. Photo today is Phil in the flyer to my right during the dry half of the match.