acorn fishery, paddock lake

another good attendance with 23 fishing, so with it being a 40 peg lake everyone had an empty peg on one side, so after a brekkie at the fishery which isnt to bad but it would never be enough for dean malin and it was only just enough for me, on to the draw and i let new dad and balding man in denial craig(trigger)edmunds draw for me and he handed me peg 12 which is a corner peg and the next angler to my right was on peg 10 and that was the cockney immagrant and self confessed carster marster ,martin mcmahon, and somerset angling,s roach demon steve kedge on 13. the venue has been fishing really well with carp being caught on pellet up the far shelf and down the edge on various baits and lots of skimmers down the middle on maggot over groundbait or soft pellet over micro,s, but i decided on a carp only attack so i set up a 4x10 rig for just down the far shelf and a dibber rig for up the shelf both on .14 with a 18 b960 for banded pellet and a 4x12 for caster down the edge with a 16 6313 on .12 but that was a non starter apart from one roach so the less said about that the better, starting on a banded 6 over loose fed 4,s i soon had a 2 pounder in the net but then it went a bit strange with only a couple of skimmers so that rig was thrown up the bank and the shallow was shipped out , and by now i could see odd mud clouds coming up and the occasional swirl, i had a few straight away but the rig wasnt right as the water was so shallow (8 inches)as the levels are down a foot so i got off the box and made up a 4x8 bristle float rig so it was easier to tell when the pellet was just on or just off the bottom, but as far as i could see around the lake i was well behind both gary mewdell on 5 and tom thick on 38 both catching well as was john dursely on 7 but he seemed to be loseing as many as he was landing, by the halfway mark steve kedge was on the silvers attack with the only serious threat to himwas craig edmunds on 18 who was catching skimmers on soft pellet between 11 and 13 mtrs , the 4th and 5th hours were my best spell but the carp were on the small side so by the end i thought i would have about 70lb but it was going to be out of gary mewdell and tom thick as to who would come out on top, as it turned out it was tom thick on 38 who had 104.9 for first ,all the fish falling to soft pellet fished across and then down the edge towards the end
2nd gary mewdell 102.4 peg 5
3rd john dursely 74lb peg 7
4th tony rixon 71.1 peg 12
5th mike chapman 68.8 peg 6
6th mike west 65.11 peg 1
silvers
craig edmunds 45.9 peg 18 on soft pellet nearly all skimmers to 3lb
steve kedge 27lb
all told it was a realy good match with everyone catching a few with only 1 weight under 30lb so there was no complaints today and considering we didnt have a cloud in the sky and it must have been at least 22c the fish fed well