short pole match at viaduct fishery

cambell lake was being used today and with 20 booked in it looked like a good day was going to be had, after a good brekkie at lillypool cafe we got to the fishery at just gone 9 and were greeted bt fish spawning again with carp, tench and bream all seeming to be having a go, so perhaps it wasnt going to be so good after all.
i let fishery owner steve long draw for me and i ended up with 123 in my hand which is another corner peg which usually responds to a long pole approach up the left hand margin but with only the topset and three more sections allowed that wasnt going to happen, steve told me that an angler had 70lb of skimmers on paste at 3mtrs last week so i went to the peg quite happy.
not being the biggest fan of paste fishing i decided on a pellet approach so i set up a 4x12 rig with an 18 b960 on .16 for banded 6,s over 4,s its an approach that has been quite effective recently so i expected it to work today, that is of course as long as the skimmers havnt swum away, also a shallow pellet rig was put together but with a 16 hook on for banded 8mm(more noise) and a meat rig for the margin.
at the start i began feeding 4,s at 6mtrs and meat into the margin, it didnt take long for the fizzing to start but it was hard to get a proper bite and by the end of the first hour all i had to show for my efforts were a few small skimmers and one carp, looking down the lake i could see carp being caught with mike nicholls on 111 seemingly catching well, but i didnt realise he was losing lots , dean on 135 was netting a few as was andy bryant on 112.
the end of the second hour and i had added a couple more carp to the net but it wasnt electric by any means with the skimmers obviously far more interested in either making or eating spawn, so by the halfway mark a switch to feeding and fishing 8,s seemed to improve things, foulers were still a problem but at least i was now getting more fish on the end, a look shallow produced 1 fish and the pellet was being battered around by small fish , the best rig seemed to be something with only 3x10,s down the line and fished at full depth and keep lifting and dropping , the meat line in the margin only gave me 2 carp, one tench plus a few better skimmers, but again small fish battering the meat into a marble shape were being a problem.
by the end it was impossible to predict who had won as most seemed to have caught well, all i knew was that it wasnt going to be me !!!!, walking down to help with the weigh in sean townsend on 128 was admitting to 180lb so he looked a clear favourite, and with dean on 135 reckoning on 150lb there seemed only the minor berths up for grabs,
1st on the day went the way of sean with 191.12 caught mainly on meat into the corner by the spit
2nd dean malin 165.15 peg 135 with pellet shallow being the best
3rd craig edmunds 139.8 peg 120 with a late run of fish shallow down the edge
4th paul elmes 136.12 peg 127
5th tony rixon 115.14 peg 123
6th phil harding 110.4 peg 129
silvers
john bradford 19.12 peg 116 with a mixture on worm and caster
i think the spawning upset the fish today as they were hard to pin down for most and a lot of the carp had very little slime on so they obviousy had more than eating on there minds but still a very good match none the less, again proving that you dont need to fish in the middle of the lake to catch fish, especially on well stocked lakes such as cambell, and i have run short pole matches on landsend and i know that they run a topset series at the sedges and they are always close run things, also the joints dont seem to ache as much the next day