todber manor park lake

well that was a good weekend for big weights, firstly tom(with the cheesey grin)mangnel beat the viaduct match record with 319lb by dapping, then he went on to beat the record on woodlands at chilton trinity with over 200lb, and yesterday at landsend on peg 31 anton page totally smashed the fishery record with 342lb, well done to them both.
back to my match and a few of us managed to get in to a total fishing forum open run by the amiable mark poppleton and not very well assisted by ken rayner. fabio drew for mark and only went and drew him the best peg on the venue which is 38, mark did try and protest that 7 was better but as he was let down by one person and yes you guessed it ,peg 7 was left in the hat making 38 the best peg.
i ended up with 28 not really a noted peg but with everyone being greeted by carp slurping in every peg you wouldnt like to say any peg had more fish ,but they certainly were enjoying the silver fish spawn feast. next peg to my left on 30 was fabio and then tim ford on 31 in the corner with the wind blowing in was always going to be a hard one to beat as you just new he was going to catch in his margin.
i set up 4 rigs , a 4x14 for down the track , a 4x12 for each side margin , a 4x10 for on the deck over and a shallow rig (6 inches deep) for over in the grass.
at the start i started feeding 8mm pellets in each margin and at 6mtrs and began firing 6,s over to the far bank, starting at 6mtrs i had 3 reasonable(3 to 4lb)carp in the first 30 mins then i started to get roached out and there are plenty in here as will bohne showed recently taking 80lb in a match, on about the hour mark i couldnt take the roach playing footie with my pellet so i went over with the shallow rig and began cathing f1,s and small carp straight away and for the next hour things were going very well , that is until a pair of ducks showed up on my far line and began mopping up the pellets off the bank and they made a mess of my far bank as they flattened some of that spikey grass onto the surface making i difficult to get the pellet through, even feeding a bit short didnt really work as the carp were staying tight to the bank as they were still mopping spawn but also eating pellets and although i had a few carp short the f1,s were being a nuisance as you dont want to catch them as they are to small, you need carp ,also there was no silver prize today so i had to keep feeding the pellet through the gaps . i stayed with it till about an hour and a half from the end ,then i went down the margins and kept catching odd carp right to the end, by the end i didnt really have a clue as to how much i had as there is a big variance in the size of the fish i was getting, so i admitted to about 130lb but hoped it was a bit more and it proved so as i ended up with 151.5 but i was beaten ito 3rd place by the 2 people i expected as mark poppleton on 38 won with 177.7 on mainly paste down his edge and 2nd place went to tim ford with 164.4 who started on the method(typical p thatchers angler)but soon switched to the pellet shallow as there were to many fish in his peg with liners being a problem plus he caught well in his margin fishing off the deck with pellet
3rd t rixon 151.5
4th ben bench 115.13
5th ken rayner 114.4
6th m blake 112.7
this has got to be one of the few venues you can go to and guarantee a bite every put in the hardest part is avoiding the f1,s as they arent big enough to build a big weight.
before the start i had to go and rescue fred roberts as his car had broken down about 2 miles from the fishery, he was parked in the entrance track to a farm, the white farmer left as we were loading his kit into my van and fred a quick word to make sure it would be ok to leave the car there until he could sort out recovery , the farmer was ok with that but he did look a bit worried when he spotted fred,s i love robert mugabe t shirt lol nice one freddo