PSV Match, Viaduct Campbell, 27-07-14

14 of us lined one of  Somerset's finest lakes yesterday looking for big hauls of carp averaging 5 or 6lb, with recent match weights in excess of 300lb, expectations were high. However it had been fished a great deal last week, so no doubt the fish will have an 'off' day......

Campbell Lake from peg 110

I arrived in plenty of time and loaded my trolley, chatting to a few of the guys, including a couple I hadn't met before. Most were keen on getting the hot pegs of 128 (the inform peg!!), 110 and 119. I must say I fancied 116 or 118 myself as there are almost always carp between these pegs amongst the brambles and trees fishing back behind you to peg 117.
I had arrived with silvers in mind, unless I drew on one of the above numbers. With silvers in mind, I wanted peg 123, probably the best silvers peg on the complex.
So I paid my monies and the draw was soon made. I let most draw before me before plucking peg 126 for myself. Not a bad draw, but in my mind neither here or there for carp or silvers....

I made my way to my peg to find myself flanked by Kev Jefferies on hot-peg 128 and (again) I had Lionel Legge on my left (peg 125). Peg 123 was taken by Mike Wilson.
I took a look at the water in front of me and could see plenty of carp around, so my silvers approach went out of the window. The sun was very strong though, shining right at my side of the lake, and peeps had said shelter had been key on the better catches, hence the hot pegs having the most shelter.

Viaduct Campbell peg 126

With the carp being present I set up a few rigs, 1 for shallow pellet fishing at 13m, 1 for down my margins either side using meat and hemp, 1 for 6m in front to my left slightly and an identical rig for fishing over my shallow line at 13m. All were set up on 0.20 mainline to size 16 B911x's and middy solid 14-16 elastics. Hooklengths were 0.18 diameter.
Bait was simple 6mm and 8mm pellets, some 8mm meat, hemp and a few assorted pellets for a change in the band.
I did have some soft pellets, groundbait and dead reds for silvers, but these stayed in the carryall.
I did set up a waggler, but other than the first 10 minutes, it remained unused.

I was soon all set up so decided to go and get the rest of my nets from the car....fate? more like fanciful thinking!!
The all in soon sounded and I baited the various lines before starting on the wag, after 10 minutes this went up the bank not to be used again....
After 10 mins I had fizzing over both my 13m line and the 6m line, so I went out shallow on the pole, then I went on the same line deep, nothing in the 10 minutes doing that. So in on the 6m line with a banded 8 used for bait, 1st drop I had a knock and hit into a carp, which was hooked in the side, only for it to come off just before netting, back out and I had another indication, another fouler lost, then a 3rd. So back out long, a couple foul hooked fish lost. They were feeding, it seemed like they were mooching around.

By the end of the 1st hour I had lost a good few foul hooked carp and landed a single 3oz roach I caught shallow on banded 8mm pellet. Elsewhere Kev had landed a couple and mullered a topkit, Chris Davis over on 118 too had landed some carp and Steve Burgess (p116) had some, I think, on the pellet wag.
Lionel on peg 125 was in the same predicament as me, he'd had odd accidental silver and lost a few foul hooked carp.
That seemed to be how the next 2hrs went, I loathed to start fishing for silvers as it only really seemed that Chris Davis was catching well, though most of the opposite bank had a few, so I then decided to adapt my carp rigs into silvers rigs, swapping hooklength and hook sizes from 0.18/16 to 0.16/18. Bait would be 6mm pellet or meat pulled onto the band.

The next 3 hours was spent picking up skimmers and roach from my 6m line and left hand margin on topkit distance. I also picked up the bonus tench, but it was the tench or big skimmers I wanted, however most skimmers were 4 to 6oz fish.
Lionel had began to fish for silvers too with corn. While up on peg 123, Mike was doing well with skimmers, plenty of decent stamp fish were being netted by him, so myself and Lionel were well behind him at this point.

As we went into the last 90 minutes, my bank became more sheltered and the carp came onto the feed, which was annoying as they were now a pain in the bum and I found myself feeding 6 pellets in different spots, picking up a silver fish or 2 before I would be interrupted by a carp. Even when I tried at topkit distance in front, feeding 10 grains of hemp, I would catch a small skimmer or roach before the inevitable carp was hooked.
Mike on the other hand, although getting a few carp, was netting skimmers of a decent size. Lionel was having my sort of problems, but both of us tried to get enough silvers for the 2nd silvers pot, as we were so far behind Chris Davis, Ron Hardiman and Kev Jefferies (and pretty much everyone on the opposite bank) that we wouldn't be able to have enough in that time to make any difference.

The all out sounded and I shouted down to Lionel that I had 15lb of silvers, he admitted to 8lb or so.
Mike must have had 30lb+ easily. On the carp front, Chris Davis got through a multitude of sections and net handles etc but looked to have more than anyone I could see.
I did manage to land 8 or 9 carp in the last 90 minutes, I also pulled out of at least 10 fish ( about half fouled I think). They were coming onto the feed massively on my bank where as the far side had slowed as the sun shone on them.

I packed up my kit and collected a net I lent to Kev, he'd done well on peg 128.
Soon enough the scales were at me, a quick look at the board showed a silvers weight of 25lb from Colin Ellaway on spit peg 129. So any chances of money were gone.
Anyways I plonked my silvers on the scales and the needle spun to 23lb 5oz, which surprised me.
My carp took my total to a shade over 67lb.
Lionel's silvers went 13lb (I think) before Mike plonked 37lb 11oz on the scales, that would win the silvers.

I made my way to the car and loaded my kit away before waiting for the final tallies.
I also went and gave Steve Burgess his quid, which has been a while since I had to do that, so maybe it's his run of pound coins that'll increase over the next few months....we shall see.
As it turned out, other than Kev Jefferies on peg 128, my side of the lake was poor while 110-119 had done somewhat better.
Chris Davis took the honours with 217lb+, mostly fishing back along the brambles and toward peg 117. 45lb behind was Ron Hardiman on peg 112.

Results:
1. Chris Davis (118) ... 217-13
2. Ron Hardiman (112) ... 172-0
3. Rich Britton (114) .... 146-15
4. Will Dearlove (119) ... 138-2
5. Kev Jefferies (128) ... 132-9
6. Pete Uzzell (110) .... 131-5
7. Steve Burgess (116) ... 106-1

Silvers:
1. Mike Wilson (123) .... 37-11
2. Colin Ellaway (129) ... 25-8
3. Lee Williams (126) ... 23-5
4. Merv Sivell (115) ... 20-1

So not a great match for me and pretty much pegs 123 to 132, with the exception of Mike and Kev.
Maybe I should have stuck to my plans to fish for silvers from the off? I am sure I would have run Mike close. All in hindsight I guess.
Maybe fishing for the carp in the last 3hrs may have push myself (and Lionel) up the leaderboard?

Anyways, next up for me is another PSV match, at Landsend (match lake).

Until next time.
Lee

Clevedon Club Match, Avalon Fishery, 20/07/14

Today's match for me was the Clevedon Club match on the match lake at Avalon fisheries down on the Somerset Levels. A venue that is pretty fair, but the end pegs often do slightly better, whichever permanent peg they fall on. With plenty of silvers in the lake and a very decent head of very hard fighting carp, weights were expected to be decent, but with bright sunshine and only an iffy, yet awkward,  breeze swirling around the lake we knew it may be tricky.

I arrived at the lake to see that John Wolstencroft, Scott Smallwood and Dave Stephenson already present and chatting about various things, especially how well the River Kenn has been fishing, plenty of roach and rudd, but the bream catches have caught the eye, check out the club's Facebook page Clevedon FWAC.
I had decided to fish for the silvers today and bought baits to suit, micro's, groundbait and expanders. Also some caster and maggot for the whip were in my bag.
However, as it turned out we only had 11 guys as there was a superleague match on the Huntspill, so the usual Thyers faces were not present.
This meant that we'd only have top 3 pay outs and no silvers pool......bugger!!

The draw was made, I wanted to have the last peg and hoped for pegs 5, 19 (end peg) or maybe peg 7, with 19 being the obvious choice as it was sure to show in the overall results.
Anyway, Vic let me have the last ticket (I think) and it was peg 16, not a peg I have fished before, but one I wasn't too unhappy with, though peg 17 looked better as it was the end of the island. Peg 16 is also probably the narrowest peg on the lake and the island was maybe 20m away, but the reeds meant I couldn't get as close as I would have liked.

Peg 16, Avalon Fishery.

For company I only had Darren 'Nuddy' Vowles who was on peg 17. Further along, on peg 19, was Paul Nichols and to my right on peg 13 was Steve Bonwick.

My main areas of attack would be the pellet waggler cast as close to the island as the wind and reeds dictated, I also set up a shallow pole rig for 14.5m in front. A depth rig too fish banded pellet over this line was made up, but only gave me a skimmer, so no more on that then.
A margin rig and a paste rig were assembled, but other than a stray tench on the paste I never gave them more that 10 minutes during the match.

Baits were 6 and 8mm pellets and a sort of paste I made from wet 6's and groundbait (it turned out ok!). I did have some maggots and casters, but they were bird food!

The all in sounded at 10am and I deposited a big pot of 6's at 6m for paste over the top, some 8mm baits went over to the reeds courtesy of a catty and lastly I began feeding 6mm pellets over the long pole line via the catapult.

My match began ok on the wag with 4 baby carp in half an hour, but like last time I was down here, bites were hard to hit and the fish were swirling at the feed and hard to nail. They still pulled as strong and used the reeds as much as possible as hooklength cutters!!
By the end of 90 minutes I had 6 small carp in my nets and a couple decent hybrids, further along on peg 19, Paul Nichols had been catching most casts on the pellet wag and had switched to the pole shallow and kept the fish coming, Nuddy on peg 17 hadn't had any carp as of that point, but had lost a waggler to a tree and was doing his best to catch something, but it was slow,

As we approached 12pm I took a look on the long pole line, where I had seen a few fish swirl at the feed, plus it was fizzing like mad, so I eased off the feed amounts as I find too much fizzing isn't great when shallow fishing.
Twenty minutes on this line gave me a few roach and hybrids, sadly only 1 carp of around 4lb. This line wasn't fished again as I pretty much chose to stick to the waggler for the rest of the match.
The halfway point of the event was soon upon us and I had upped my total of carp to 8, though a couple small 1lb stockies were also netted. So I had perhaps 25lb or so.
Nuddy had one carp and a few silvers. Paul on p19 was emptying it!! I couldn't really see anyone else and nobody had taken a walk up so I guess they were doing ok.

I continued to feed my long pole line, but things didn't seem right there, only the odd swirl, so I stayed on the waggler, but had switched to a 6mm pellet in the band and lengthened the hooklength in hoping for a slower bait fall, this seemed to work and I began getting a few more fish. Though I did have to keep busy, which I what I like, and I was re-casting every 10 seconds or so, feeding every 3rd cast. I stopped feeding each cast as the fish began to follow any feed that went too far and they were sucking up tight to the island where I couldn't get my bait due to over hanging reeds.
Nuddy had a few more silvers and a couple little carp from his margin and I kept an eye on how he was doing here.

With 90 minutes left in the match it seemed peg 19 had won as he must have had 100lb or more in his nets, I was on 12 carp, maybe 32lb in total. A couple looks on my pole lines gave me a big fat nothing so it was back on the wag!
A ghostie of 6lb was a welcome bonus, but the fish began coming more regularly, this also increased my lost fish, these were simply lost as the 0.20 hooklengths were being run through the green reeds and breaking it. It was hit and hold stuff and these fish do tend to tear off at a million miles an hour.
Nuddy had also given up and decided to go and sit and watch Paul on peg 19.

At the all-out Nuddy had told me that Paul had easily 40lb in the last hour while he was sat there, so guessed him to have 180lb, I thought maybe a bit more.
I ended up with 20 carp, 5 or 6 of them being 1lb stockies, so I guess I had 60lb or less.
I admitted to Vic as he walked by that I had my usual 40lb in my net....which was true!!
I packed my stuff away and was soon down watching Paul weigh in, he had some decent lumps in his nets, plus plenty of small stockie sized carp.

Paul Nichols, part of his 175lb+ catch (p19)

His nets gave him a great weight of 175lb 3oz, well done him.
Darren 'nuddy' Vowles weighed next on peg 17, his few carp and 5lb of silvers gave him a level 15lb.
Next up was me, my silvers weighed 7lb 6oz, half of which was that tench. My 1st carp net went 42lb 3oz, my 2nd net went 40lb 5oz. So my 40lb in a net was spot-on, I just didn't say 'nets'. So 89lb 14oz was a very decent total. Slightly more than expected.

I left the scales to continue along the bank, but Vic was sure my weight seemed ok for 2nd.
I loaded the barrow and soon caught back up with the weighing in, and my net was still second as we got down to peg 7, Simon Ryall put 40-09 on the scales to temporarily move into 3rd, top bagger Andy Hembrow on peg 6 DNW'd much to some amusement.....Adie Baker on peg 5 troubled the scales with 44lb exactly. Last up was Scott Smallwood, he scooped the 3rd place pay out with a 45lb 13oz catch from peg 3.

Weigh Sheet

Results:
1st, peg 19, Paul Nichols, 175lb 3oz
2nd, peg 16, Lee Williams, 89lb 14oz
3rd, peg 3, Scott Smallwood, 45lb 13oz

So all in all it was a fair match, with the winner being the exception. My late run of fish boosted my weight, but my faffing with hook baits, feeding and presentation definitely worked for me.
I fed around 4 pints of 6mm pellets and 3pts of 8's over the course of the match and lost around 7 fish to the reeds and 2 hook pulls. My holiday fund gets a bit more added to it, which is nice. But it was an enjoyable day.

Next up for me is a match on Viaduct's Campbell Lake, with the PSV guys.

Until next time, take care.
Lee

PSV Match, Sedges Brick Lake, 13/07/14

This weekend's foray saw myself and a dozen other 'men' heading towards the Sedges Fishery in Bridgwater, for what was expected to be a good match with decent weights.
Pay outs would be top 3 and top two silvers.

As usual I arrived in plenty of time for the 9am draw and the lovely Denise provided me with a nice cup of tea, now she is like me in the use of tea spoons, so please bear in mind when you are there that 1 spoon is to tip your sugar in the mug, another is used to stir the drink - separate spoons!!
Anyways, Sedges were also holding one of their 'top-two' series of matches on Tile lake, where the anglers are only allowed to use the topkit of their pole only, no other sections allowed, it's very popular and with catches to 160lb+ and fish to 20lb+, it is fun. There were a good few anglers present all enjoying the craic.

Back to PSV's match, most of the guys fancied the usual pegs, 9,10, 11, 12 and maybe 20 for the carp weights, pegs 3, 5, 7, 14 and 15 for the silvers. Personally I hoped for 9 or 10, and given I haven't even been on these 2 pegs, I knew that was very slim.
Adam Caswell usually nets a corner in these matches as it gives him dry land to snag up on, and true to form he drew peg 1 and only ended up hooking the end bank no less than 3 times.....
Steve Burgess never drew a corner so that made a change for him, but Chris Szakacs (p11), Darren North (10) and Mark Radford (20) were lucky enough with the balls they chose.
Me, well I picked peg 14, so silvers were my main target should I not get carp within the 1st hour.

Sedges Brick, Peg 14

For company I had Lionel Legge on peg 15 and on peg 12 was Ryan Radford.
Arriving at my peg the first thing I noted was the stiff breeze push across at me and slightly right to left, so any kind of distance for the pole may be a struggle and feeding with the catapult would be tricky, especially the 8mm pellets for the wag/lead line.

I never had worm/caster with me due to my pure laziness of buying any, it is a great bait on these lakes.
My baits I did have were 6 and 8mm pellets, some 8mm meat and some expanders for the hook. I also mixed up a kilo of sonu crushed expander/sensas lake/sonu method mix in a 40/40/20 per cent mix, this was well wetted and riddled twice to create a lovey fluffy mix. I did have some 10 day old maggots which remained pretty much unused as I think I would have been 'bitted out'.

Rigs were:
NG Decker in 0.6g , 0.14>0.10>B911f1 size 16. Elastic was solid 6. To be fished at 13m slightly right over groundbait for skimmers.
NG Power Pencil, 0.4g, 0.20>0.16>B911 size 16 with a band on a hair. Laccy was solid 14/16. Fished at 13m to my left a bit with an 8mm pellet in the band over 6's and 8's fed mostly with the catapult.
NG Power Pencil, 0.3g, 0.20>0.18>B911 size 14. Laccy 14/16 again. 2+2 line with meat over meat.
NG Margin 0.2g, 0.20>0.16>B911 size 16 again with a band and 14/16 elastic. Shallow 13m line over the pellets, but remained unused.
NG Margin 0.2g, 0.20>0.18>B911 14 for use with meat tight in close, but remain pretty much unused.
I also set up a waggler and a lead for just short of the central rope. Both for 8mm pellets in a band.

Anyways after an hour I was ready, which was good as the all in was at 10am (well 10:10am).
I cupped in 2 lightly squeezed balls of gb on that line, a decent cup of mostly 6's on that line and a small amount of meat on the 2+2 line, which I would top up every 20 mins with 8 cubes of meat.
I began on the waggler, which was tricky in the wind, but I stuck at it for 20 minutes without a bite, and those I could see hadn't had a fish either. Switching to the lead gave me a skimmer of 12oz first chuck, but this was a false dawn. I spent the next 40 minutes fishless rotating the lead and waggler.
By the end of the initial 60 minutes a few carp had been caught including Brian Shanks on peg 9 and Adam on peg 1.

The 2nd hour saw me switch to the groundbait line and my tactics would be mostly to get some silvers, this proved fruitful and I began picking up the odd skimmer and roach. But it wasn't prolific, well not as prolific as Chris Davis on peg 3, he seemed to be catching at around 5m, but had calmer water and could feed accurately by hand. The 2+2 line was hopefully going to be my banker later on in the day.
As we headed into the 3rd hour I kept trying the lead/waggler but without success so I left them alone for the rest of the day. The pole line at 13m was really tricky to fish in the wind, but gave me odd skimmers. By now I had around 10lb of silvers in the net, which seemed ok. I had to keep switching between my pellet line and groundbait lines to keep fish coming, with the 8mm banded pellet being slightly better. It seemed like I had to keep feed going in on the pellet line, yet the groundbait needed leaving once cupped in, but would give me a longer run of slightly smaller fish on 6mm expanders or 8mm meat.

Looking around as the clock came to 2pm led me to believe Brian Shanks (p9) was well clear, he'd had plenty of carp on the wag and odd one on the pole. Adam had a few carp. I also heard pegs 20 and 11 were catching too. Over the other side Chris Davis was bagging away on silvers and I guess he had around 40lb thus far, plus a few rogue carp. The others were catching odd skimmer and carp.
This hour also saw me land a couple carp on the light set up, these did take a while to net though, especially the bigger of the 2 which was around 10lb.
I also gave the 2+2 line a try which gave up a 2lb tench and a 1lb skimmer, but that was my action from that line for the match.

The last couple of hours flew by with me netting a few more skimmers and roach by switching between the 2 longer lines, but presentation was hard as was holding 13m of carbon.
Lionel, next to me, was picking up odd skimmer and had a carp, but I could see elastic regularly being stretched further down to my left, which I had hoped would be carp as I was hoping to snatch 2nd silvers money, Chris Davis was bagging 3 fish to every one of mine so he was well clear in the silvers.

The all out sounded at ten past five and we all began to pack away, I had a couple carp and I thought just over 20lb of silvers.
Lionel packed away and tipped back, I figured Brian must have 100lb as he was on his 3rd net. Chris Davis looked like he had a comfortable 50lb of silvers plus some carp. That was really all I noted really. But everyone seemed to say the carp came on well in the last hour, which rung true for most. I'd just tried to keep putting skimmers in the net.

I wandered down the lake, just in time to meet Adam, who'd decided to be his usual keen self and wanted to start the weighing, he said he'd had 9 carp but lost 13 lumps (re-occurrence of weekly tale).
So first to weigh was Chris Szakacs on peg 11, his total was 93lb 13oz. Ryan was next with 33lb and then came me, my 2 carp gave me 14lb 5oz, added this to my under-estimated 40lb exactly of silvers gave me 54lb 5oz.
Steve Burgess weighed in next, I expected to give him a quid for a change, but it turned out he'd caught a few carp and totalled 50lb 4oz included in this was 15lb of silvers.
Ron Hardiman put 20lb 10oz of silvers on the weigh sheet from peg 18 before Mark Radford's 85lb 9oz moved him into 2nd spot form corner peg 20.
Peg 1, Adam Caswell, weighted around 60lb of fish.
Peg 3 saw Chris Davis pull out a great net of silvers, 2 weighs of these produced 67lb 7oz while his 52lb+ of carp pushed his total to 119lb 9oz.
As we shuffled along the bank we had 28lb to Mike Welling and 64lb+ to Alan Healey, then was Brian Shanks on peg 9. We knew he'd done 100lb, he said just under, but we were not surprised to see his weighs amass 118lb 7oz, just pipped by Chris Davis for the win.
Lastly saw Darren North put 36lb 3oz on the scales.

I soon made my way back to my kit and loaded the car before the winnings were presented.

Results:
1st, Chris Davis, p3, 119lb 9oz
2nd, Brian Shanks, p9, 118lb 7oz
3rd, Chris Szakacs, p 11, 93lb 13oz

Silvers 1st, Chris Davis, 67lb 7oz, p3.
Silvers 2nd, Lee Williams, 40lb, p14.
Silvers 3rd, Ron Hardiman, 20lb 10z, p18.

Weigh Sheet

So I picked up the Silvers winnings by default, putting some more money in the holiday pot. Plus my quid from Mr Burgess, which goes into my car-park fees pot.
It was an enjoyable match, if not spoilt a bit by the wind and the fish taking a while to get their heads down. Chris' net of silvers was brilliant, he caught on 8mm meat over 8mm meat at 5m for most of the day.
I wish I could have caught on the same line from my peg, but feeding by hand was difficult with the wind. But I am pleased enough with 40lb of silvers and in a way I am glad I didn't hook many carp, landed 2 from 3 I actually hooked, the 3rd fell off at the net as it was hooked in the pec and looked 3lb or so.

Next up for me is a match down at Avalon with Clevedon next Sunday, which could be good, I do hope to get the better of the carp this time around and will take my stronger waggler set-up this time round. Plus I have put my 3.5m whip in my holdall.

Until next time, take care.
Lee

P.S. Sedges' top-two match on Tile Lake was won by Vic Bush with over 160lb with plenty of back up weights, he fished mostly worm and paste. Tile lake is currently on fire at the moment with various match records going almost on a weekly basis,

Pawlett Club, Silvers Winners' Final, Quantock Lakes, Nether Stowey. 06-07-14

Today was the club's dedicated match to all those who had won the a silvers match or had the best silvers weight at matches during 2013, I qualified by winning the silvers at Viaduct in early 2013 in freezing conditions.

Anyways, we had 16 fishing today on a lake which 12 of us or so hadn't seen up close or fished. The venue was chosen by Dave Nash, he likes the place.
It is set in the ground of a converted barn set-up which is used to host weddings, in fact I went to have a look yesterday but turned around at the entrance as I didn't want to gate crash someone's special day.

I arrived at the sensible hour of 8:15 for a 9am draw. A few guys were there already and had a look around, there seemed to be a good few carp at each end of the lake, these fish wouldn't count as its a silvers match. The owner told us that there was bream, skimmers, roach of a decent size and some rudd and perch. He said there were no eels or tench!!
We did the draw at just before 9am and I pulled my ticket halfway down the queue and out popped peg 9, last peg on the side bank up the far end of the lake. For company I had Jamie Cook on peg 11 (end bank peg) and on peg 8 I had Dick Hurford. I could also see Jason King and Mike Davis opposite.

I arrived at my peg to see that there were a few carp in the upper layers, but not much in the way of silver fish activity.
I decided to set up a small waggler for just past my 13m pole range, 2 top kits were assembled (both NG Silverfish Caners on 0.14>0.10>B911f1 size 20 to 6/8 middy elastic. One was 0.6g and the other 0.3g) and a 3.5m whip was rigged up too.

P9, Quantock Lakes. Nether Stowey.

Bait wise I had mixed 2.5kg of sensas lake and sonu crushed expander mixed 50/50 and riddled 3 times and mixed on the dry side. I had 1pt of each maggots and caster, plus some corn and 4mm expanders for the hook.

I plumbed up a line for 13m and found 4.5ft, this was the same depth right the way in until we got to the top kit +1 line where I found the bottom of a shelf where it was 6" shallower. The waggler line was the same depth as the long pole.
The whip was set to fish shallow, but in hindsight I used a float which was too heavy, but we had a brisk wind which increased during the day.

I was ready in plenty of time, so I was ready at the all-in. When the 10:30 was called I cupped in 4 small balls of groundbait at 13m along with a few casters, maggots and expenders in. I was to fish the heavier float on this line. Alas I wont mention this line again as I never had a bite on it before the wind got too much, it also became too awkward for the waggler so that wasn't used other than a couple chucks (did give 1oz rudd each time).
I then cupped in some caster and maggot at the top kit +1 line before throwing some maggots at the whip line.

I began long and remained biteless for half an hour, with the guys I could see also not catching, though further down I could hear that a few carp had been hooked plus some silvers.
I came short to the +1 line and managed a couple 1oz rudd, but it was quiet. All the while I had been feeding the whip line.
After the 1st hour I had a handful of 1oz plips and that was it, Mike over on peg 12 had a nice silverfish of some sorts.

Into the 2nd hour and I had a look on the whip line, this gave me plenty of bites, but the fish didn't seem to get any larger than a couple ounces. This hour was pretty productive compared to the 1st, I put about 25 fish in the net for probably a pound or so. I also noted that Eric Fouracre had landed one of the non-existant eels and Jamie Cook had began his carp-quest.

The start of the 3rd hour saw me look on the pole lines, without success, so I decided to stick with the whip line, however I did have the occasional look on the short pole line plus I tried the pole rig over my whip line in case any better fish were present on the feed that would have gotten to the lake bed.
I found that on the whip I would get a couple bites and then the fish would move up or down in the water. A switch to feeding nuggets of my groundbait every 3rd fish definitely helped bring bites.

So the last 4 hours were pretty much spent on the whip picking off fish averaging maybe an ounce, with the odd bonus 2oz fish!! Jamie meanwhile was bagging loads of carp, I think he hooked around 25 during the day, landing a good percentage. Rumour had it that Vic Bush had landed a couple decent skimmers and a few other guys had some nice roach, rudd and odd skimmer too. So I wasn't doing great.....

The all out was called at 16:30 and I thought that I had 5lb of bits, a mix of roach and rudd, but no better fish, casters didn't make a difference to the size, plus I tried towards some reeds in my margin, but that area gave me even smaller fish, I had 150+ fish by the end of the match, but with a lot of them weighed 1/2oz each or less.
I packed my kit away and soon found the scales at my peg, with Dave Nash, Vic Bush and Pete Manning all put double figures on the scales. I also knew Eric Fouracre had around 10lb from what I could see.
I tipped my 5lb of bits onto the scales and it swelled to 8lb 12oz. which at that point gave me 4th spot.

I continued to pack away as the scales made the way along the far bank, and from what I could tell, I had more than those anglers with the exception of Eric.
Back at the car park I loaded the car and waited for the results. There was lots and moans though, but it was a fair venue, if not ideal or liked by many. Dave Nash likes it though as it suits his fishing.

The results were called:
1st Dave Nash - 12lb 9oz - peg 1
2nd Vic Bush - 11lb exactly - peg 5
3rd Pete Manning - 10lb 10oz - peg 7
4th Eric Fourace - 10lb 7oz - peg 19
5th Lee Williams - 8lb 12oz

Section winners were:
Chris 'Giffy' Ware (pegs 1-8) with 4lb 11oz off peg 6
Eric Fouracre (pegs 9-22) with 10lb 7oz off peg 19

My weight was good enough for 5th on the day, but if Eric had landed 4oz more then I would have won the section, lol.

Weigh Sheet.

So all in all it was a fair match, plenty of carp made an appearance, but thankfully I never connected with any. I fed 3/4pt of caster, the same of maggot and almost 2.5kg of groundbait, I enjoyed the fishing, just a shame I couldn't find a bonus fish or 10....a lot of the better roach (4oz+) were caught further back down the lake where the wind was stronger.

Next up for me is a match on Sedges with PSV, it is on Brick Lake.

Take Care.
Lee