Saturday 03/08/2019 - Windmill Gloucestershire Show Open - Match Lake

Porridge and Beans for breakfast. Arrived in plenty of time for the supposedly 08:30 draw. If I can get there in time why then do we have to wait until 09:00 for others to arrive! Back in the day we would carry on with the published draw time and leave a draw on the organisers windscreen. Organiser Dave Haines on the morning has phones calls with anglers crying off - not good enough. Dave puts a lot of effort into these matches which today included a Carp Bivvy/Tent - pictured right.

Last but one into the draw bag and out comes peg 23. I was reasonably happy with this one even though its a corner peg and 10.2 foot deep - see Lake topography right. My section included Keith Bilder, Martin Rayet, Shaun Townsend, Chris Davis so not the easiest section - but depended on how long Chris would stay!

I just set up the two paste rigs - one for the margins which are difficult as they are all steep and hard to hold, and one for top-set plus one to fish five foot up the inside shelf. Having fed the margin in two placed to my left - one top-set and the other top-set plus two. I started over hard 4's on the deep rig and first try missed a bite next try landed a 7 lb Carp - so a good start and was anticipating a good day. After 30 minutes and no further bites from Carp I noticed a reed wobble so went early in the long margin and caught a 3 lb Common. After 30 minutes and no further Carp bites I tried the short margin and had a 8 lb Carp fist try. I had now changed my mind about having a good day as could no longer get a bite from any line. I got another section out to go further down the margin against the reeds in the deeper margin. I fed this very cautiously and picked off the odd Carp until the end, losing one better Carp close to netting it. By now Chris Davis had thrown the towel in after breaking a top-set - as he does. Keith Builder also done a FOE, Martin Rayet DNW so it was between me and Shaun for the section. Shaun weighed  52 lb 6 oz beating my 49 lb 1 oz by 3 lb 5 oz so that one Carp costing me a section pick-up!! Thats fishing.

Our end of the Lake to say the least fished very hard indeed.

The match was won by The Trig (pictured below with his daughter Triglet) with 114 lb 2 oz from peg 19. The Trig fish pellet at 16 metres to the far bank upto the mud bank with a very shallow swing rig.

The top four pictured below.

Weigh Sheet and Result: