Ive been looking forward to this series as last your I bombed out big time first round and never recovered. An early start, on the road at 6.20, and as usual a big breakfast is the order of the day, and very nice it was too. Nice little cash bonus today, sold around 30 of my floay range. Into the draw bag and I pull out peg 22 on Match lake. All three lake are used in this series and you swap around the lakes first three matches and then a randon draw again. I was pretty happy with it as it was around the area that won on saturday. The water was very clear thanks to a week of frosts, so a carefull aproach was needed. For company I had Pete Nurse on 24. He seams to live on that peg. Match organiser Ken Rayner opposite on 1 and Chris Koniecszny (probably spelt that wrong) on 20 to my left.With it being so shallow across to the island i didnt bother with a shallow rig as i tend to waste too much time trying to catch in near impossible conditions. Its a bad habbit ive got. So it was a pellet rig for the bottom of the far shelf. A meat rig for 2+2 (didnt think that would realy work). a silvers rig to fish two plus two to my right at the bottom of the near shelf . And a rig to fish under platform 21. I started on the meat line hoping to catch a rougue carp but nothing happened for 15 minutes. Pete had already netted a smallish carp in that time and Chris was netting one when I decided to switch lines. I dropped in on the long line where i had fed just 4 6mm pellets and almost instantly hooked up a carp. Happy days. Blank saved, unlike last years start. Back out and a few minutes later another graced the net. 4 more pellets fed and I caught two more quickly before it died. So 45 minutes in and Im on around 18lb. but then I went 45 biteles minutes on that line. so I decided to go 6 meters to the right and copy the tactics. Well blow me, it worked again and three more and a skimmer hit the net. So two hours in and Im pretty happy. But then nearly three hours with nothing. Only one twitchy bite, and I swapped around many times looking for fish. With 40 minutes left I tried the silver line again and had a beasty perch close to 2 1/2 pound. I had dropped a few maggots in to my left by now and went in there and another good perch came my way followed by a small roach but that was it then and Ken shouted the all out. At least today I landed every fish I hooked , which was very important. The lake had fished rock hard and the word was five carp was best anywhere else on the lake so I was feeling confident. At the weigh in I put 4-13 of silvers in the net, and 30-02 of carp for 34-15 total and lake and section win. It was hard all over the lakes and no big weights came out. Russ Peck won Specie lake with 69-12 from peg 32, and Rod Wootton won top lake with 53-00 from peg 58. First week of realy cold weather so it was sort of expected to fish hard. Onto the next one.
results
Match lake
Stu Barnett, 34-15, peg 22
Nick Ducket, 25-04, peg 4
Pete Nurse, 22-06, peg 24 (His second home)
Silvers, Ken Raynor, 6-08, peg 1
Specie lake
Russ Peck, 69-12, peg 32
Steve Sewell, 31-09, peg 36
Adrian Jeffrey, 22-14, peg 40
Silvers Tony Rixon, 21-00 (all roach)
Top lake
Rod Wootton, 53-00, peg 58
Lee Williams, 15-05, peg 51
Martin Rayet, 9-00, peg 68
Silvers Gary Oshea, 5-12, peg 70
