Southwest trade match, todber manor

This is an annual match organised by mark harper mainly, but helped(or hindered by dave drake and Norman hugget), myself and the Avon angling night watchman travelled down and it only took about an hour and ten minutes to get to the dolphin pub in gillingham for breakfast and the draw, I must say the breakfast was really good, tasty and hot with plenty for all.
Into the draw and out comes 34 on park lake, I always seem to draw this back straight when I go here,  the end peg 38 is normally the peg to beat, but I was quite happy with my peg as I had a small bay to fish into amongst the overhanging foliage on the fat bank, this is a fishery that needs a proper trim to tidy it up, it is a heavily stocked water with lots of f1,s and carp up to 6lb and its possible to get bites all over your peg, but with 200lb needed to win you need to make up your mind early on as to which line you are going to target and make it work as it soon becomes a fish race, mark harper was to my right on 32 and with whitepost lakes in he expected the winner to come from there, but with a lot of cold rain during the night the water seemed to have lost a bit of  colour so who knows .
I set up a couple of pellet rigs for the far side, one for on top of the shelf and one on the slope, a pellet rig for the margins and the obligatory meat line for 5 mtrs.
At the start I fed all lines with the relevant baits and went over on the slope rig , lowered the rig in and it kept going , that was a 4lb carp first drop, a good start.
I kept catching odd fish so I stuck with it for the first couple of hours but as the time went on foulers became more of a problem, so with tails waiving up on the shelf the rest of the match was spent after them apart from a couple of short sorties on the meat line which produced half a dozen fish but it wasnt quick enough, I also had one fish down the edge but that was even slower, so far bank it was then. By now mark harper who had a slow start was catching well with f1,s and carp falling to his corn attack at 5 mtrs, he had intended to fish the method for a while at the start but he threw in into a snag and lost the lot before the start and I don't think he had another , Preston must be out of stock.
Although there were plenty of fish against the at bank they proving hard to catch as there was lots od debris under the surface making it hard to keep fitting and dropping, and also when the bait got to the bottom I think it was below the rubbish. By the end I had 40 plus carp but with lots on the small side 2lb ish I thought I may just scrape 100lb, mark was convinced I had 135 at least but I didn't , I new it
was going to be close between us and when he plonked 107.13 on the scales I thought he would just

edge it, I was next to weigh and my nets went 103.10, one good fish really, our lake seemed to Have
Fished hard so we expected white post to produce the weights , but it turned out to be just as hard
There
Ian didcote on 5 park came out on top with 146.6, with all his fish falling to bait tech polony
2nd Marc jones 133.1. On 27 whitepost
3rd mark harper, 107.13, 32 park
4th tony Rixon , 103.10 34 park
5 th steve kedge 101.14 , 23 whitepost
6th John candy 99.12, whitepost
Well it took one hour 10 to get there, but missed my turning in bruton and it took us two hours 15 to get home , we even went past viaduct lol, talk about senior moments.