emerald pool silvers match

I had 16 booked in for this one so it shows hiw popular the venue is, after a nice brekkie in shipham , where we had the company of mark poppleton who comes all the way from devizes to fish, at least it took the piss taking pressure off ken rayner, off to the fishery which is only about 20 mins from the cafe. Dom sullivan had already pegged ot so all I had to do was collect the pools, that was done by 9.45 so we had the draw , I didnt really want a peg at the top end of the lake as its shallow and we had a bit of a banging frost, so where does mike nicholls pull a peg for me, yep, up on the top bank looking back down the lake, only just over 2 foot of water , whereas the other end of the lake there is over 4 foot of water, for company I had venue expert dom sullivan on 11 to my left and barry fitchew to my right on 13, I only set up 2 rigs, both 4x12 slim patterns with 18 middy 6313 hooks on .12.
The plan was to start on soft pellet over micros at 7 mtrs and feed a caster line short at 4 mtrs, hence one of the rigs was to fish to hand over the close line, but with it being so shallow I only managed a few fish on that line during the day,
at the start I began on soft pellet on the 7 mtr line , but never had a bite in the first 5 mins , and with tom thick over on 9 and other people at the other end also datching from the off, I wa soon slippimg a single red maggot on, and that was the bait I stuck with for the rest of the match,  I never felt I was competing as there seemed to to many fish being netted and flying through air, even barry to my right was catching steadily, puttimg hybrids and odd small tench in the net , myself and dom were struggling and mark poppleton around the corner on 10 was doing his best to make us all look like champio s, then again a couple mre shot on his float may of helped, as I think the fish may have needed to turn up mob handed to pull his perch bobber under,  I cant say I never had many bites as I did, unfortunately a lot were from rogue carp , fantails , and f1,s which many confuse with crucians, so thats why nothing with carp in the name counted, even a couple of goldfish had to ne returned, I think I put back 13 or 14 carp and 12 other types of lesser carp,  I did manage to catch 35.13 of hybrids snd a few small tench but it was never going to be any good,
the only money I was going to win was a quid off dom,
1st on the day was tom thick with 67.4 of mainly skimmers, hybrids and some small tench on soft pellet
2nd steve tucker with 53lb
3rd timmy ckark with 45lb
4th jt, john Bradford and harry muire with 39.14
5th barry fitchew with 38.6
6th ken rayner with 36.8
there was about 600lb of fish cqught between 16 anglers today and with hardly a fish over 1lb caught its certainly good fishing