Silverfox rip off

Mike Nicholls managed to broker a deal with Pete the lake owner to have a match on boyd valley lake in bitton, so after a help yourself brekkie in whitchurch in the Toby carvery, (3.75 no coffee and late opening) I did battle with the whitchurch village and keynsham rush hour traffic and got to the lake with 5 minutes to spare before draw time. 16 fishing so a reasonable turnout, I havnt been here for , well I can't remember how long, it's certainly more than 8 years, and it hasn't changed much, there were plenty of skimmers back then but I thing the flying black plague has taken care of those, but according to the people who fish it occasionally there are plenty of roach sonar least we wouldn't blank, it seems the far bank in amongst the reeds was the place to be, so into the draw box and out comes 13, right side then. For company I had Martin McMahon on my right and Andy gard on my left, with roach in mind I set a .8g as4 for 7 mtrs which was as far as I wanted to go as it was going to be a bit breezy and historically it isn't necessary to go to far, also a .4g as4 for 4mtrs and a meat rig for against the reeds.

At the start I cupped in two balls of groundbait at 7mtrs but began on the short caster line, gave it twenty minutes but not a touch, the only person to have a bite was Glen Bailey on peg 11 who had a carp on the long pole, so I went out over my groundbait line on single maggot on a 20 book on .10 , after about ten minutes I had a bite which resulted in an 8lb common being coaxed into the net, back out and a slightly smaller one was soon joining it in the net, shortly after that I had another , again a bit smaller, so after an hour I was winning as Glen hadn't added anymore , I would like to say I had a steady day adding a few more to my tally, but it wasn't to be, bites for everyone were at a premium, the last 4 hours of the match were extremely difficult, I had three more bites, two roach and a lost fouler, the expected roach fest never happened, people were actually fishing for fry  in the reeds just to get a bite, the only person to catch was Glen who did get two carp and a big hybrid on the pole but had a further 8 carp on the lead fishing across to a feed bed using maggot or bread for bait, so Glen ran out the easy winner with 54lb

but I managed second with my three carp and two roach going 17.11 and Mike Jones was third with 17.1.
Glen would have won the silvers aswell as his hybrid went 1.11, but the default win went to Paul barnfield took the honours with 1.1 of fry from the reeds winners picture below aswell as a weigh sheet, not to sure if I will be rushing back to this one, at least not for a match during the cold weather, as I think the gales and cold rain of the previous night possibly had an effect on the outcome.