Thursday affordable at harescombe fishery

travelled up with Chris fox today, we were nearly late as a motorcyclist decided to fall off at jct 13 a bit of a tailback but we managed just get by and got the fishery well in time for brekkie, sadly only 9 of us turned up, so at least we would have plenty of room. Into the draw bag and out comes 8, as of yet I haven't drawn the same peg twice, and I ain't had a bad days fishing yet, Chris drew 14 which was the end peg on our bank, so I reversed up to his peg and dropped him off, then Dave to mine , where I unloaded the gear and set about tackleing up, all was gong well until Andy the fishery manager arrived to tell me I was getting ready on peg 9, doh, senior moment, and that was the first time I have ever done that, plus it was raining which it wasn't meant to do in Gloucester , they got that right then as it pissed down all day !!!!!!.
So kit moved onto the right peg and still enough the to get ready, I have indulged myself with a new drennan acolyte carp pole so I gave it a run out today, and I got to say it's a nice piece of kit , bearing in mind it's a carp pole so it's not going to be ultra stiff and light but it is manageable up to 14 mtrs easily , so looking for a quality all round pole definitely give this one the once over.
Back to the fishing , and I thought maggots would be worth a go today and with the weather still very mild I thought the fish would still be against the island on the shelf, so I set up a maggot rig for that and a pellet rig for further along the island and the same rig would do for down the edge, big mistake was not setting up a rig for 4 mtrs in front at this stage.
At the start I cupped in some maggots against the island and fed some pellets in the two areas, margin and island.
Starting across on maggot resulted in a couple of small roach the a barbel, followed by a three pound carp then another barbel, followed by more and more and more small roach, then an f1 then back to the roach fry and gudgeon, an hour in and going nowhere on the maggot so I binned that and switched to the island pellet line , but that proved difficult with only odd f1,s and even fewer carp. Down the edge wasn't much better, and I could see Adrian Jeffrey opposite catching steadily as was Martin hook to my right and Chris fox beyond him, all,of a sudden there was only two hours left , looking along Martin to my left was still catching short so I set up a 4x14 rig to fish at 4 mtrs, luckily I did start feeding the line not long after the start just in case , so I started catching some decent f1,s and in the last two hours I probably put 3/4 of my final weight in the net but it was never going to be enough especially as Chris on 14 was still catching and Mike Nichols over on 20 also had a good last couple of hours, just fishing with his topkit down each side margin, but in th end I was a lot closer than I realised , another hour and I may have had him, Mike won on the day with 63.2
2nd was Chris fox with 60.6
3rd me with 52.10
4th Martin hook with 46
5th stuart graham on 29 again with 44.14
6th Adrian Jeffrey with 42.4
Off for an open at landsend on Sunday , still got some space so ring or txt me on 07974807941 to book in of contact me in veals on 01179260790