Gary's day

Today's match saw us back at Wickham Hall hoping the fish had decided to start feeding after a long winter. Again we did a rover and I decided to sit on peg 6 as it was sheltered from the surprisingly cold wind. It made a huge difference as I spent the day in just a sweatshirt whilst Rob, facing the wind on peg 11, was tucked up in coat and hat.

The plan was 2 swims: a longer line with cage or method feeder in a count of about 10 (pretty deep); and a pole line at around 9m which was a top 3 deep (about 10 feet).

An hour in and none of us had had a sign when Rob finally had a carp over on peg 11. In my swim a try on the pole produced no signs even from the hordes of small rudd in the lake. About 11.30 Mark's swim over on peg 1 suddenly kicked into life and he had 2 bream and a hybrid of about 2lbs in a 30 mins spell. Over on our bank neither Phil, Tony nor I had still not seen any signs of a bite.

About halfway through I spotted a couple of small carp sunning themselves in the corner to my right. 20 metres upwind of course. The feeder was out of the question as it was full of weed on the bottom. A shallow waggler would just about work so I set up a rod and had a go for them. Casting was hard work needing me to wait for the wind to calm before I could get near the fish. Sadly my one chance ended carp 1 Gary 0. Despite getting it out of the weed a couple of times my luck did not hold.

And that was it for my day. Our bank ended fishless with neither Phil nor Tony getting a bite. We all thought Mark had this one but we had not spotted Rob sneak in another carp. It would be close.

Well it was a quick weigh in today with just Rob and Mark catching. Rob's second sneaky carp was enough to push Mark into second. 1st Rob Calderon 8lbs 5oz and 2nd Mark Halverson 7lbs 9oz. Today's picture is Mark with his couple of bream and a good sized hybrid.