Acorn Tuesday cost cutter.

Off to Acorn  today for the usual Tuesday bash with the oldies. Plenty of time for breakfast at the Bridge Inn, as I had collected my gear last night and came across the second Severn crossing which is much quicker cutting out all the Bristol bound traffic at the Almondsbury interchange, and a very nice breakfast it was too. Best I`ve had from there. Onto the fishery and my usual sale of floats was done and it was time for the draw. In early and out pops number 9. I was more than happy with that as that area has been chucking up some good weights for a while now. Got to the peg and there were fish everywhere. They were even rolling under my platform when I was setting my gear up. Happy days. I went mad and set up 5 rigs today. One for against the island, but apart from plumbing up that rig never got touched again. A paste rig for 2+2 to fish over micros. A .5 slim for top kit straight out off the end of my nets. A .3 slim to fish to platform 8. Again that never got touched after plumbing up. And a .3 SS Margin to fish both sides down the edge. At the start I went out on the paste rig. As soon as the micros I potted in hit the bottom it was like a jacuzzi fizzing away. The float was ripping under but I wasn`t hooking anything. Then after 15 minutes I had a good tench. Not what I was hoping for but it was a start. Stuart on peg 11 had three carp pretty quick at the start but they were not very big, so I thought I had better try something else. I had been feeding both margins and after 30 minutes I saw a couple of fish moving to my left.so the edge rig went into action , and that`s were I stayed for the rest of the day apart from a ten minute try off the end of my nets. There were carp climbing over each other both sides, but I stayed to my left for a while. I was hooking lots but landing few. The first 14 hooked I lost 12. Then I did manage to put a few in the net, but the left side was a bit hit and miss. Loads of fish but struggling to really get the bites I expected form that many fish. So I went to the right side after about an hour and that was it. It was manic. hooking fish every put in but I was loosing loads. After three and a half hours I has 150lb on my clicker but the lost fish were doing my head in. At that time I had lost 50. Like I said it was manic. At one stage I was basically slapping in the edge and I hooked and lost three in less than 20 seconds. But I was hooking and landing enough to put a big weight together. I did sort out the foul hookers with an hour to go. I had been hooking and playing fish and feeding before landing and that was lining the next fish up. But I was also feeding after I dropped my rig in and it was holding too many fish in the peg, hence the massive amount of foul hooker. So I completely stopped feeding after I dropped my rig in. That was allowing the frenzy of feeding to die back after I fed while playing fish and just kept a few lined up to hook. This resulted in a lot less fish lost and more hooked in the right area. In the last hour I must have put close to 100lb in the net. At the end I was guessing in the region of 260 to 280lb. I`d hate to think of how much Id lost as I recon it was around 80 carp lost, a lot more than I landed, and a lot of them were big fish. I recon that has to be a very unwanted world record lol. I weighed in 267-3 which was enough for the win today. Today was a personal best for me as I`d never weighed over 200lb before last week, now thats twice in two matches.Full match results below.

1. Stuart Barnett 267-03 p9
2. Roy Hughes 135-11 p40
3. John Thompson 128-09 p26
4. Lee Waller 123-06 p17
5. Dave Smart 121-01 p3
6. Mark Barden 110-12 p33
Silvers
1. Mike Chapman 21-09 p30
2. Keith Fisher 13-06 p19