Mathern Mill silvers series round 1

A nice short 7 minute drive to Mathern today for round 1 of the Silvers series run by Norm Sterry and Andy J Fuller. There`s loads of decent skimmers in this place so we were all hoping for a good day. Into the draw bucket and I get peg 8 in my hand. A peg known as "The Hole" as it has a very deep hole to the left at less than a top kit length that use to win all the winter matches. Andy Fuller was to my right and had a good moan about drawing peg 11. The plan today was to fish maggot and caster over groundbait laced with casters and micros. I was trying some new floats today, all wire stemmed. I set up a 4x16, and 4x14 to fish two lines at 7m and 13m. Also set up a 4x12 to fish a slower drop but the water was a bit deep for that at close to 7 foot. Also set up a maggot feeder to fish out in the open water to start with while the groundbait lines settled. Started on that and was straight in to a few rudd and small skimmers. Had around half a dozen before the first decent skimmer came in at 1 1/2lb. I gave it another 10 minutes before I came in on the 13m line and was into the same stamp of rudd and skimmers as the feeder line. But they were coming regular so I kept on it. Andy was getting a few good skimmers to my right and had stopped moaning about his peg. Another good skimmer came before I tried the short line, Plenty of bites but only small stuff.  Then it went a bit tits up as after two hours the carp moved in and the silver just about disappeared. The rest of the match was spent switching lines looking for a few silvers but I just got carped out wherever it dropped in. And some of them were right munters. I had one over the net that was never gonna go in the landing net in a million years. It was 20lb plus and after a couple of times trying to fold it up enough to drop in the net the hook pulled. I did manage a few small fish and four more decent skimmers with the biggest 3lb plus 15 minutes from the end but I was never gonna compete for top honours today. Top spot today went to Andy who managed to avoid the carp today for the first 4 hours with 41-14 of nearly all good skimmers to the 3lb mark. Second was Norm Sterry on peg 19 with 28-15. Not too many big skimmers in his net but a boat load of smaller stuff. Third was tom Baker on peg 20 with 25-15 of decent skimmers. My net was just over  21lb for 5th. Not done much silvers fishing for years so it made a nice change. Just need to get a bit better at it. Any other day those carp would have been most welcome. Maybe next match Ill feed less and keep the buggers away.

!st Andy Fuller 41-14, peg 11
2nd Norm Sterry 28 15, peg 19
3rd Tom Baker 25-15, peg 20
4th Matt Roden 23-11, peg 25