Gary's day

After the excitement of yesterday's match at Hall Farm we were expecting today to be a lot harder and slower over at Wickham Hall. With the bright sunshine and warm temperatures I was not expecting any of the bream to put in an appearance.

At the draw I pulled out 1st pick and decided to fish over in the far corner on peg 12 (or Rob's peg as it is now known ;-) ). Fred decided to join me over on the other side of the corner and the rest chose to stay over at the entrance end. Tactics today were to just catch fish of any sort so it was maggots on a shorter pole line which I was fishing with a whip and then a longer line in deep water to sit and wait for a bonus fish on maggots or corn.

At the all-in I fed 6 large balls of groundbait long and then settled in to catch some small fish closer whilst that settled. The warm weather has certainly stirred up the small rudd and roach and I was struggling to get the float to even cock before the maggot was being hammered by small fish. It was busy fishing but trying to get the better stamp of fish was hard - corn occasionally worked but was slow. When the rudd started to get even smaller I decided to give it a rest and dropped on the long line. Putting a piece of corn on let the bait get to the bottom in the 12ft of water. I was just about to go back to the rudd when the float dipped under and I struck into not a rudd. A couple of minutes later a skimmer of about 1lb was in the net but that was it for that visit. I dropped in some more groundbait and went back to the rudd.

Around the rest of the lake only small fish seemed to be coming out although Darren in the corner ahead of me had a run in with a carp early on. Around 12 Fred dropped a method feeder in the edge toward the weed bed and the tip went round mid-sandwich. And then it went round again a few minutes later. My hard mornings work was quickly being caught up.

After a try on the feeder whilst I ate a bit of lunch (no bites for me) it was time to try the long line again. After a nice little chub the float wobbled and went under again and something a bit bigger was on the line. After charging around the place I also had a small carp in the net and then a bream of about 2lbs.

Swapping around a couple more times found me 2 more bream and a nice hybrid with the last bream coming just before the all out. Perhaps bream do like sunshine after all.

I could see Darren had been catching small fish at a quick rate the last couple of hours or so of the match whilst I had been sitting it out for another arrival. At the weigh in my bonus fish made the difference although it could have been a lot closer if Darren had started after the silvers earlier and Fred's carp had stayed. Picture today is me with a very fit roach/bream hybrid of about 2lbs.