landsend weds

we had abit of a change today as we were only allowed to use our topset plus number 4 section which was handy as the wind was meant to be quite strong today and blowing from the west is straight down the fishery making island fishing hard .we thought it would be good to try a short pole match as it seemed to be a winner at the sedges where they do a topset only league and its very popular , and you generally need
70lb to win with good backup weights.
roger andoniou drew for me so i ended up on peg 3, not the best under normal match conditions but today who knows.
i set up two 4x14 rigs ,one with an 18 6313 and the othewr with a 16 of the same pattern both on .12 and both to use at 4 sections and the left hand margin by a bush as it was the same depth and a 4x12 with an 18 hook for the left hand margin as it was about 1ft shallower.
starting in front i began by feeding softened 3mm with a 4mm soft pellet on the hook whilst feeding casters into each margin.
i began catching roach straight away so that was ok then about 10 mins in a decent common came by eating blossom off the surface so in dropped my pellet on its nose and it took it straight away, well that was a quick 7 pounder in the net, the first half of the match went ok as i had a couple more carp on the soft pellet plus a couple of good skimmers and crucians and f1,s then the bite dried up plus the wind was making it difficult to get decent presentation, so i started feeding some casters with the pellets and went into the margins with caster , but it was very slow , i must admit to expecting more from the left hand side as i have caught well there in the past ,but for some reason the fish didnt seem to be there, i did get 2 chub a small carp and some small perch but it wasnt good in the right hand side i managed a couple of perch and a small tench then nothing, so it was back out in front with double maggot and as there was some fizzing going on now i fully expected some action , and i did but mainly from fish that i needed to try and get to reverse into the landing net , i did land a couple of foulers (no suprise there then)and a couple in the mouth to end with 9 carp and about 20lb of silvers, due to the bankside foliage i couldnt see what was going on , except for the gimp on peg 5 who i could see was putting a steady stream of silvers into his net, even though he was moaning that he couldnt get a bite , and i could hear some splashing from the far side but i didnt know whether it was dean malin or dan white, as it turned out it was dan white who had been catching on meat and ended up winning with84.12 on peg 21
i was 2nd with60.6
3rd went to the inform tim ford with 55.3 on peg 7
4th tom thick on peg 16 with 54lb
5th mike nicholls on 15 with 49lb
6th alan oram with 48.12 on peg 12
silvers went the way of the gimp with 27.14 but only just with alan having 27.8 and tim netting 27.2
all ai all it was a very fair match with 7 weights over 20lb of silvers alone so we will try it again in a fortnight so book early to avoid dissapointment lol
perhaps some of the other fisheries in the area might give it a go, it may be a bit of an eye opener and its certainly easier on the arms