avon angling open , chilton trinity, woodland lake

21 booked in for today so not to much spare room , unless you were on an end bank or near it , its always a good start to the day with the ever smiling misha in the hut making cups of tea and coffee for all , this continues to be one of the best maintaned fisheries about with misha and her dad john constantly working to improve things,
i let misha draw for me and she handed me peg 15, nice peg with a long margin to my left as peg 16 wasnt in as its a sort of corner peg and we would be pole fencing if both pegs were used, i had fabio on 17 and trigger on 14 so with good andlers around me it was going to be an interesting day, even though we had a frost i still expected it to fish ok as its 8 ft deep and i didnt think the cold would have penetrated to any extent(wrong), i set up a margin rig for my right to fish meat , it was a 4x14 impact 6 with a xedion 18 on .14, also set up were 2 rigs for out in front at 13 and 16 mtrs , one was a j range , forgot the number bit it was a 4x18 with a wire stem with a 18 9313 on .14 the other was a 4x16 j21 with a 18 6313 on .12, at the start i cupped in some meat at 13 mtrs and some soaked micros at 16 mtrs, i also put some meat at 8 mtrs down the margin,
by the time i had finished feeding fabio was playing an 8lb fish he had snared on the shallow rig , which was something i thought would be a non starter, and he had another before i had a bite, . i had begun on meat at 13 mtrs and it took me over an hour to put a smallish carp in the net and a small skimmer, trig by now had also had a carp on meat shallow but that was all they had up in the water, i went out to 16 mtrs with double maggot over the micros but never had a bite which is very strange on this venue as small roach tend to be a real problem , but not today.
with no bites occurring i had plenty of time to look around but no one was catching , silvers or carp, except for nigel bartlett opposite who was blip bashing and tom mangnal down on peg 2 all on his own who was getting odd carp, but with the sun out it was a lovely warm day , and with the banter flying around it was an enjoyable day,
a look down the edge gave me a bite on meat but the carp came off so i refed ,had a quick look on the long pole lines but with no bites it was back down the edge , no mistakes with the next bite and a 4lb carp was safely netted shortly followed by a 1 1/4 lb tench an d that was thew end of my bites in that spot so i refed at 14 mtrs up the edge towards the empty pallet with corn and went back out in front but apart from a few skimmers nothing was happening, trig had taken a few more carp but was struggling as was fabio, he peaked to early.
it had turned into a proper grueller with bites and hooked fish at a premium, i did manage 2 carp on corn up the edge at 14 mtrs but going into the last 15 mins i was still behind fabio and trig, out of desperation i went out on the light rig with double maggot at 16 mtrs over the micro and couldnt believe it when the float buried and i had a 7lb fish, that was the only bite i had on maggot all day , and it helped me to beat both fabio and trig, both of which seemed a bit gutted, in fact it helped me into 3rd spot and last in the overall money.
1st was tom mangnal 66.1 peg 2 , he had 10 carp and 8lb of silvers all his fish falling to maggot and caster
2nd mike(what idiot pegged it like this)nicholls with 44.4
3rd tony rixon 32.6 peg 15
4th craig(trigger) edmunds 29.3 peg 14
5th phil(fabio) harding 28.5 peg 17
6th bela bakos , 27.9 peg 25
silver
the top blippy basher who is nigel bartlett 9.9 , mainly whitebait on single caster or maggot on his topset