Windmill Sunday open.

Not been to windmill for a while as its been bit of a balls up match scene there for a while. The regular anglers have been messed around with which lake they are to use. But today was on match lake. 13 fishing today so plenty of room and I manage to pull out peg 6. I was pretty happy with it as its a decent peg. Opposite in the Island gap I had Tim Ford, so plenty of chatting would be going on, and to my right was Ryan Brushneen on peg 4. 4 rigs today all for carp as all I had on me bait wise was Pellets and corn. I thought I had a tin of meat in my bag, but nope, not there. So I set up a .15 Shalla Slim to fish the far side at 14.5 metres. But when I plumbed up I had about two inches of water right across. So I ended up coming back out by 2 metres and still only had 8 inches. I also set up a dibber for long lining across in the shallow water. A .5 slim to fish 8 metres on corn down the deepest part of the peg. And a .3 SS margin for both sides down the edge. Tho it was a lot shallower to my left I couldn`t be bothered to set up two rigs for that so id just slide the float up and down. I also set up the usual bomb rod for this place. Its always good for a few. At the start I went out on the bomb at the point of the island.

There were loads of carp there and half their bodies were out of the water and they were going nuts for the loose fed 8mm pellets but they were skilfully avoiding my hook bait. Tim started well and was straight into fish doing the same as me. as was Ryan casting to the shallow shelf across to the island. But me, I couldn`t get a sniff. every time I fed a few pellets carp were crawling up the shelf to grab them. Still not a touch. Tim was on three when I decided to change to the long pole and feed the shallow line. It worked and i had a couple in the next 15 minutes, but they were very spooky and bolting when they saw the pole. Tim was storming ahead of me but his fish were a bit small. The first half of the match was slow for me and after three hours I only had 6 all on the long pole. The margin had started showing a bit of life but they were so spooked all the time. They were scared of their own shadows.

The corn rig had only produced a skimmer first drop in then no other bites. Another try on the bomb and finally the tip pulls round and I managed to get one to the net. followed by another 10 minutes later. But then it was back to loads of fish showing and no pull rounds. Tim was catching pretty regular by now after an hour where he had nothing and Ryan was netting a few. At that point they were both well ahead of me. I did keep Tim informed about the mighty Bristol City demolishing Blackburn, I just couldn`t help it after he said how bad the Gas were yesterday. So with just over two hours to go I started to get the odd fish in the margins and they were good fish. I was nowhere near Tim numbers wise but my fish were a lot bigger so I started to peg Tim and Ryan back. A couple more followed when I tried the bomb again but the last two hours were spent mostly in the margins. At the end I admited to Tim to having just over the ton mark, but that was to bite me in the arse when I weighed in. First to weigh in was Matt Collins on peg 2 who put a mighty 218lb on the scales, and that was top weight on the day. Ryan was next and weighed 74.15. I was next and my bad guess was way out and I weighed 87-15. Which amused Tim as I was nearly 20lb out on my guess. I must have clicked one of the double figure fish twice. NUMPTY lol. I didnt follow the scales round so didnt see much of what was weighed, But Tim did let me know that he had whooped my arse by 5lb with 92-15, dave Wilmot had a good day too with 135-13v for second place. dave haynes won the silvers with a nice net for 17-9. Full results below.The sheet is a bit messy but you can see most of it