Pairs series , todber manor

Travelled with Ken cosmic rayner today as he is my partner for this four match series, after a passable breakfast at cannards well, it was off to the fishery, there were 20 pairs booked into the series a week ago , but as is normal people started crying off, just leaving 14 pairs, luckily fishery boss did mark poppleton a good deal on the pegging so well done to him, and we found ourselves pegged over ash and hillview lakes, one section of 6 on ash and 3 sections on hillview, into the draw and out comes 38 on hillview, General opinion was the it was likely to be the worst section, so I was partly glad to get it out of the way before the cold weather arrives, for company I had Chris Malkin on 37 and the evergreen Nick ewers on 40, the rest of my section was made up of Steve nadin on 34, fishery expert and in house professional Nick merry on 35 and Fred Roberts on 41.
Simple set up today , a meat rig to fish halfway down the near side slope in about 3 foot of water to my right , a pellet rig for on the deck at 6 and 13 mtrs, for banded 6mm over hard 4,s, and last but not least a METHOD feeder to fish out by the island.

At the start I began by feeding the three pope line's then chucked the feeder out, and I was soon getting bites and catching on banded pellet, plenty of bites on it providing I landed about a mtr off the side of the island, I did lose a few as I was fishing an inline feeder, I should have used an elasticated one as the inline one was banging some  Off, although I wasn't catching well, I thought I was doing ok, that was until Nick merry came onto his pole line and began catching pastie stock carp really well, and Steve to his left was catching well on a small pellet feeder, all of a sudden I was falling behind as Nick to my right also began catching quicker than me, I came onto the pole on banded pellet, but bites only came from roach, then micro tench, not a good start, I was miles behind Nick merry and Steve nadin, also Nick to my right was beating me, but I new I was ahead of Fred, but it was close between me and Chris,
I tried the meat line about halfway through but that showed no signs so the next 90 mins were spent between the feeder and the longer pole line, the short pole line also was a non starter, but by now Steve Nick and Nick were all catching on there short lines, so wit about an hour and 15 minutes to go in dropped onto the short meat line and the fish had turned up, I had skimmers to 2lb and the bigger carp rocked up, and the peg got stronger towards the end, so instead of looking at nearly last in the section, I was climbing back up chasing down Steve and Nick, who were still catching but only small carp, with the size of fish I was catching I suddenly had thoughts of winning the section, but the match finished about 10 minutes to soon for me, when the scales got to me Nick merry was winning the section with 104 lb, I didn't think I had any where near that, I was more than surprised to weigh a few ounces over 100lb , so like I said another ten minutes would have probably been enough time to overhaul him but then again I may not have had another big fish and Nick may have got one, it doesn't matter now though as its all over, second in section good enough considering how far behind I was, the lakes fished really well as the sheets below will show, the next round is in November, so it may be a bit more difficult by then, cosmic Ken had a bit of a grueller, he only had 68lb which was only good enough for 4th in section, son we have it all to do in the last three matches.

Off to acorn again on Tuesday, then next weekend its a double header silver's fest at viaduct, all winners silver final on Saturday, then round 2 of the silver's league on Saturday,