Weds emerald open

Only 10 ended up fishing today mainly due to the weather forecast, freezing cold with a strong westerly wind pushing rain, hail and sleet along with it, mike jones did his best to give everyone a bit of shelter behind the conifer trees, so 8 on ruby and 2 on sapphire, the only peg that was going to be weather affected badly was peg 1, but it's a good peg n the top bank of ruby with a small island at 10 mtrs so into the draw bag and out comes 1, happy with that , and the weather men have been known to get it wrong!!!!!. I got to the peg and not only was it the coldest, but it was also the muddiest.
Three rigs today, one for just off the island straight out and another at 11 mtrs to the right for a couple of spots, both for banded pellet so it was a b960 on ,14 for those two rigs and a caster rig for 4mtrs in front and to the left in front of a overhanging branch, that had the usual 6313 size 18 on ,10 line.
At the start I fed the three pellet lines with softened 4,s then started on the short caster line , I had bites from roach straight away, great, but it never lasted, and basically after about 20 mins that was the end of the close line, I did get a carp straight out and three down to the right but it was hard , our end didn't seem to have to many roach as rich Coles to my left and the gimp next to him were both fishing hard for them but they were really struggling getting only odd ones, looking further down the lake mike nicholls seemed to be swinging some out and mike jones next to him was also catching, so that decided it quite early on, carp it was then. Glen bailey on 7 seemed to be doing the best fishing banded pellet out to a small island at 14 mtrs in front of him. I went out to my little island and caught straight off , small carp and small goldfish crosses, but that soon got more difficult, so I tried the two longer lines off to the right but apart from a couple of small inbred thingy,s it was no bites there then, I fed the lines again and tried the caster lines but two small roach in 10 mins had me chucking that rig up the bank never to be used again, I persevered with the island swim gettin odd small carp but glen was pulling further ahead all the time. I had a really bad two hour spell in the middle but glen kept catching, then about two hours from the end , the two 11 mtr lines started to come good, only odd better carp(2lb) and lengthy of small crosses and even a couple of proper goldfish and fantails, but proper carp were being hard to come by, so the first 90 mins were ok and the last two hours were really enjoyable , which is more than can be said for the weather, the promised hail, sleet and rain, blowing into me and across, so by the end I had no feeling in my feet and hands and I was covered in mud. Considering the cold it fished well again with glen bailey winning with 47lb , second was Adrian jeffery on sapphire with 43lb, I was third with 39lb and dave bacon was fourth with 37lb , 5th was mike nicholls with about 24 lb which included top silver weight of 14lb ish, see his blog for the weigh sheet .
Off to viaduct for the second round of the winter league  it's my turn on cambell, it can be a cruel venue n the cold weather , but not to cruel to me I hope.