gone to the dark side

it was another pole only at viaduct and with 31 booked in it just goes to show how popular these matches are.i drew peg 100 on cary, which wasnt really the lake you wanted to be on as cambell as it was fishing well. and with the on form andy powers on 115 it looked to be a forgone conclusion. walking to my peg and having a chat with mash ,he reckoned that the pellet approach wasnt working to well on this lake as all you seemed to do was foulhook everything. so what do i do, set up a pellet rig for on the deck which was a 4x12 j2 on .18 with the favourite b960 size 16 , and a up in the water rig . at the start i cupped in half a cup of 6,s at 14 mtrs and wwent straight in with a banded 8, the peg started fizzing straight away but it still took me 20 mins to put the first carp in the net, by which time mash on 97 had 3 on paste and glen bailey opposite on 78 had taken a couple shallow and they contineud to take fish for the first 3 hours with glen swapping between shallow pellet and paste to catch and mash just sticking to the paste, during the same time all i had to show for my efforts were a few decent skimmers and several large scales. with people catching on the paste there was nothing else but to sneak up to the van and get a bag of paste(urgh). i cupped in some 6,s and made a rig up which didnt take long as all you need is a float and a hook, with it fished dead depth the paste sets the float, and what i,ve seen it dont even matter if the float is lying st 45 degrees as the fish still pull it under, first put in the float buries and a 12 pounder is netted, and all of a sudden the world begins to look like a better place, by the end i had 11 carp and about 10 lb of skimmers, the scales arrived and the carp weighed 109.3 and the skimmers 10.10 for a total of 119.13, not enough to frame but enough for a default section as mash framed up.
the match was won by andy powers with 293.3 off 115 all taken shallow at 16 mtrs. it seems he cant stop catching at the moment, he,s even caught 4lb up on erewash canal during a practice match for the div 2 national. what with him and dan squires i,m beginning the think ginger people are going for world domination.
2nd was chris fox on 119 with 192.10 again taken shallow at 16 mtrs
3rd kieth masheeder(outed)with 179.14 on 97 with my favourite bait,PASTE
4th alan oram 161.1 peg 132
5th ray hayward 140.2 peg129
6th glen bailey 133.3 peg 78
silvers went to brendan currie on 111 with 48.14 of skimmers and tench on meat
another good match with plenty of fish caught all round