Gary's day

It was another sunny day at a very weedy MBL. We were a little down on numbers but at least that allowed us to pick out the more fishable swims. Peg 10 was to be my home for the day - when Mark said it was a bit weedy he was not joking - it looked like pea soup with all the greenery on the top. And dotted along its edge over on the far side of the lake were a steady stream of dark shapes moving. With all the weed between us and them they knew they were safe.

The day was going to be pretty simple for me: I found a small area near the lilies where it looked like someone had cleared a patch; and then it was another small clear patch to my 2 o'clock. And that was it, anything other than a float was a waste of time given the amount of weed.

I had a great start catching some nice rudd and roach of 3-4oz on the waggler and this kept going for a couple of hours but faded quickly once the sun was overhead. Apart from a brief encounter with one of the Lake's larger carp half-way through the match which proceeded to plough through about 10 m of weed beds before snagging me up it was a question of trying to keep the odd small fish coming to the net for the rest of the match. No sign of tench or bigger bream for me with just a couple of tench coming out - Mark also had a couple of run ins with the carp. At the net I had just over 8lbs of silvers - that is 8lbs more than my last visit to MBL in early spring when I could not get a bite!

1st Gary Pickard 8lbs 1oz, 2nd Jeff Pearson 7lbs 1oz and 3rd Mark Halverson 5lbs 7oz.