Gary's day
Today was the official start of autumn although it was going to be a hot start with 26C+ forecast. Whilst we were waiting for the draw there were plenty of fish surfacing on the lake so it looked like it could be a good day.
Out of the draw bag came peg 7 for me, not the one I wanted as I fancied the shallower car park end today. It was going to be: long and shallow on the pole; down the edges later; and, hopefully, something at around 4 sections in 7ft before the peg got way too deep.
A start on the short swim whilst trying to persuade the cruising fish from coming into pole range got me a couple of smaller carp but then the bites stopped. But it was a good start. The shallower pegs were slow to kick off and only Jeff to my right seemed to have anything early. A quick try on the long shallow swim did not get me anything. There was some bubbling though and a quick try on the feeder found me 1 more carp but after that just liners.
There were still lots of fish cruising but they were very spooky and not feeding. Out came some emergency maggots and feeding them got the carp curious. Finally I had a fish shallow but then the rudd joined in and I could not get the bait near the odd carp coming into the feed. Swapping back to 4mms started to work and I had a great little run of F1s shallow. To my right Jeff started catching a few more down the edges and to the left the shallow swims started to kick in and there looked to be someone with a fish on every time I glanced that way.
It was now 2pm and time to try my margins. They were going to be tricky as they were deep with a huge slope. Thankfully they had a few fish in them and I had a steady run of good sized carp on paste. The fishing got trickier as the fish wanted to come into shallower water where the slope was worse and the bites to landed fish ratio went off a cliff. It was going to be a tight finish as everyone had caught well.
1st Gary Pickard 89lbs 2oz, 2nd Phil Whitmill 88lbs 10oz and 3rd Mark Halverson 70lbs 7oz. Today's picture is Jeff tipping back part of his catch.