Rob's Day

At Wickham Hall on another hot day – temperatures around 30c and little wind. Numbers down today with seven on the match but welcoming David for his first match with us.

I decided to leave the corner pegs out today to try and make it fairer – pegged 3 across to 14. I drew peg 19 near the bottom of the slope – the level was down so set up the box in the water today.

Decided just to go for small fish today with the hope of a bonus fish or two – set up a couple of whips and a pole for out long – no rods today. A few small fish swimming close in when we arrived but these disappeared at the start so went on the 5m whip in around 6 foot of water.

Fed the long line with a couple of balls of groundbait and concentrated on the whip. After a few minutes starting getting bites albeit from small fish but never the less bites.

Tried the long pole a couple of times on corn and maggot but same size fish as on the whip so spent most of the day short. Seemed to get a run of small fish (with a few better fish around 3 oz or so) then they would disappear for a while before returning.

Bill had a good start with a few fish including a 4oz carp on peg 2 and Steve on my left seemed to be catching a better stamp of fish including a few nice chublets around 6-8 oz. Fred quiet on peg 3 with strict orders not to cast past peg 4s platform, Jeff looked to be leading – the only one to get into the bream, landing 3 although claiming 5!

Into the last couple of hours and struck into something bigger, after a struggle on the whip landed a hybrid around 2lb. A final try on the long pole was cut short (literally) when the 7 section broke in half – nice!

At the weigh in David over on peg 14 had a tough day – losing 3 good fish, Jeff's fish went 8lb 4oz, and Tony weighed 1lb 3oz. My fish went 11lb for top spot, Steve’s 5lb 11oz and Bill’s 5lb 6oz

So pleased with the amount of bites today despite the small size of the fish, most of us catching a few. Thanks to David for the delivery of cold drinks today and commiserations on the lost fish, hopefully see you again soon.