Gary's day
Today was going to be very wet with rain and thunderstorms forecast for most of the day. Thankfully we missed the most of this but it was a very wet morning. It was another roving match and, with second pick, I decided to try the far corner peg 15ish.
I went for 3 main lines: pole in front in about 9ft before it headed into the deeps; a feeder line a little further out; and an emergency maggot line shorter to the right. A quick try to the left on a method feeder found more weed than I was expecting so that quickly ruled out the left.
Tony got off to a quick start with a carp on pretty much his first cast. The rest of us had much longer to wait. A try on the long pole found a couple of reasonable rudd and baby carp on sweetcorn but it was way too slow. A go on a cage feeder had me bitted out with small rudd with the bait being attacked on the drop.
Mark over in the opposite corner then started to get a few bites but the carp knew exactly where to go and were bolting into the weeds. With the lake fishing hard it was time to get something in the net so out came a 6m whip and I spent the next hour or so catching anything I could on maggot. It was hard work with way too many very small fish. A quick try on the long pole netted me a carp of about 3lb which more than doubled my efforts. I kept swapping between whip, pole and feeder trying to find bonus fish. With an hour to go Steve to the corner on my right and Phil down the right hand bank started getting bites from carp. A last gasp small carp which I managed to get out of the weeds was going to be vital.
It was a close finish with lost fish making all the difference. 1st Gary Pickard 15lbs 3oz, 2nd Steve Foster 14lbs 7oz and 3rd Phil Whitmill 6lbs 12oz. Sorry no photo today as my phone seems to be paying up.