Gary's day

Summer is here at last with not a cloud in the sky for Sunday's draw. Today was Wickham Hall with none of us quite sure what we were fishing for. The bright sun was making me think carp and silvers rather than bream.

Out of the bag came peg 19 for me. With seeing the hordes of fry down the margins I set up feeder and waggler rods and left the pole in the bag. I was going to try a slider float but the repair on the old rod I brought along to try this came unglued. Plain waggler it was then.

At the start out went a few feeder fulls to try and tempt the carp and bream whilst I tried to get a few silvers in the net on waggler. Well I had plenty of bites on maggot with the float dancing all over the place as it was mobbed by the fry even out towards the middle.

It was slow going for everyone else with most using bigger baits like corn to avoid the micro silvers.

A stint on the feeder turned up nothing but a few rattles from small fish and lots of those were as it was falling through the water. Another go on the waggler found some more small rudd and roach but the size was getting worse. Tony then had a carp over on the other side and my small fish were wiped out.

When Tony landed another carp a bit after the half way point it was clear the small silvers were not going to cut it especially as even they were slowing down. The last hour was all about finding bigger fish. With about 25 mins to go I finally hooked somethjng bigger and a 2lb bream was in the net. The next couple of casts were uneventful but then I had a liner with 5 mins to go. A quick reel in and recast and the tip went round again just before the whistle and a smaller skimmer was in the net. The bream had finally shown up but too late.

At the weigh in it was all down to how big were Tony's carp. 1st Tony Cruci 9lbs 3oz, 2nd Gary Pickard 6lbs and 3rd Steve Lucas 4oz. Picture today my peg 19 and some of the small fry that made things difficult.