acorn weds match on paddock lake

it shows how popular this venue is when you get over 20 fishing and today was no different as i had 25 names so a decent match was on the cards.
the oldest angler on the planet in the shape of roger andoniou drew for me and handed me peg 16 which is on the back bank straight, for company i had travelling partner dean malin on my right and toothy legend anton page on my left so no easy day today,
the three of us were all going to fish differently with dean mainly targetting the middle, anton going for the soft pellet approach to the far side and me , well the normal hard pellet was going in, i did want to bring some casters but i sold them all and as it turned out they would have been useful, i set up several rigs for across which included on the deck close in, 2 inches deep for in the grass, half depth and one for on the deck about a mtr off.
to say it was a difficult day would be an understatement as i had no problem getting fish up into the shallow water but they were hard to hook in the mouth, although i went over the bridge before the start and cleared the spiky grass away i dont think i did enough and i never cleared the dead stuff off the bottom as i was constantly catching dead stuff on the hook. then the ducks turn up and push a load of the cut stuff off the bank and onto the surface as they set about eating the overshoot of my pellets, the fish dont mind the ducks, in fact i think they like it as the water gets churned up and coloured and you can see tails amongst the wedded feet, the main problem was that when you got your pellet through the mess i couldnt lift and drop as the pellet would get stuck up on a bit of crap, so once the bait got to the deck i had to leave it but all that did was result in foulers, i did get a few in the grass but i never really got in contention during the match, i could see mike west on 5 catching and i thought i glimpsed mike nicholls on 31 sneaking some out, by the end i reckoned i had 60lb and i wasnt to far out i weighed 59.5, dean had 50.9 and anton ended with 59.7 so there possibly wasnt enough carp in the area to do any damage or we were just rubbish, anton did get some late fish on caster towards the end as did mat tomes on 13 and it turned out mike nicholls fish caster down his edge for over 100lb, so perhaps i will keep some casters for myself next time.
1st on the day was mike west with 112.5 off peg 5 on meat to the far bank at the start then paste down his left hand margin
2nd chris davis on peg 7 with 105.12
3rd mike nicholls peg 31 with 101.10 which included top silvers weight on the day with 36.2 which looked like a real mixture of all the species of silvers which inhabit the lake
4th nick collier 86.2 peg 38
5th tom mangnal 85.10 peg 26
6th mat tomes 82.3 peg 13