weds landsend

firstly well done matt tomes, those who know him will realise that his forehead is expanding at a fair old lick, but he has sorted it, he has had extensions added to his eyebrows and he is back combing the lot staight back over the top. it looks mint.
back to the draw and matt drew me 40 in the corner of the speci lake, its not shown any carp form for a while so it looks like a silvers day, and with anton page next door the banter was always going to be good, luckily we had tom thick at the next peg again so we had an easy target close at hand.
a 4x14 rig down the edge to my left with an 18 808 to .10
a 4x14 rig same hook and line to fish at 16 mtrs to the hay bale, which is where nick collier had 17 lb of silvers at the weekend
and same size rig to fish in open water with a variety of baits over micro,s.
on the all in i cupped casters by the hay bale, micro,s in open water and threw caster to my left by the bush.
out to the bale and i started to get indications straight away, which i thought were carp and sure enough after a small roach the 6 elastic was streaming out with a fouler which soon broke the .10, so on with the .12 and out with a piece of corn, after a couple of liners another fouler and that came adrift, then i had a small carp just under 3lb then i lost another , and that was the end of the liners, it didnt take me long to scare them off .
by now anton had snuck ahead in the silvers so i had to play catch up which was always going to be hard.
by now alan oram on form peg 34 had lost his first three carp but had started to get them in the mouth by fishing up on the shelf with triple maggot, also the 4 extra pegs we put on match lake were ghetting a few so most of us were on a no hoper, so silvers offered the best chance of picking up. with 2 hours to go i was definately behind and couldnt get a bite in front of the bale , so got of my box and made up a 4x12 rig with a middy finesse 18 hook to .12 to fish the right hand margin just short of the bale, i should have done it earlier as i started getting good perch and roach, basically i cocked up if i had gone tighter in to the margins earlier i would have had a lot more especially if i had targeted a couple of areas against the edge(live and learn).
as expected alan oram won with 100 lb 5 oz. 10 carp and 9lb of silvers
2nd mike west on 19 had 73.5 , which was 11 carp and also top silver weight on the day 17.9 all his fish taken on soft pellet at13 mtrs
3rd nick collier 43.12 peg 33
4th jason radford 40.9 peg 16
5th pete sivell 32.14 peg 32
6th matt (16 2)tomes 31.4 peg 13
as for the pound between anton and me , i was robbed, during the weigh in anton dropped some fish on the floor and i was reliably informed that he picked up some gravel with the roach cos he weighed 17.2 to my stone free 17.1(do i sound bitter)