Todber manor silver,s final

Travelled on my own today, stopped off at cannards for breakfast, it was ok, a nice 4 on the rixon scale.
Had a quick drive around the lakes when I got there, gary(elf on the shelf)o,Shea was up on hillview mixing his groundbait, a quick chat with him and he reckoned that homeground would be the place to be today, with its good population of bream and skimmers along with plenty of good roach. There were some good silvers anglers in attendance, and some missing aswell, including Steve kedge who is always a threat in these sort of venues, I asked Mr Collins as to why he hadn't turned up and he reliably informed me that on Easter Sunday his wife makes him dress up as an Easter bunny and go and hide in the garden, then she has to go and find him, I found it hard to believe but Nick was adamant this was how it pans out ever easter, and Dave roper seemed to agree LOL.
Any way John candy soon had the draw underway, in I go and out comes 61 hillview, not a peg of choice and in the match yesterday the anglers here including locals such as Ben dukes and Mark Harper struggled to catch carp and silvers were almost non existent, but they do move and change daily , so you never know, I was in good company with an old friend in the shape of Steve Hutchinson, we've know each other for nearly 35 years but our paths don't cross to often these days, but I get the impression the dark side of commercials is calling to him.

I only set up three rigs today, a .6g pc bodied double bulked to fish worn and groundbait at 11 mtrs,  a .4g drennan as5 for caster over groundbait at 7mtrs, and a .4g as5 to fish on my topkit to hand with caster .

On the whistle I cupped in some worm infested groundbait at 11mtrs, some of the same but caster infused  at 7mtrs, and began feeding some caster on the topkit line.
I started at 7mtrs and had a couple of small fish but nothing to right home about, so I tried a worm head on the long line, but again just small fish and an f1, so an hour in nearly and I got the topkit rig out, and I had an enjoyable near 2 hours fishing catching quality roach , all in single caster, lovely fishing, and looking round it appeared this lake at least was not fishing well at all, but after a couple of hours this line died, I then had about 90 minutes when I could hardly get a bite any where , even on single maggot, then towards the end of the match I had a few skimmers on the worm line, then 15 minutes from the end I had a 6lb plus bream, a proper bonus fish, I began thinking I may sneak in, but the scales would tell the tale, I was last to weigh in in the whole match, and Mike nicholls was winning with 33.14 from homeground  lake with a mixture of skimmers and quality roach on wagglered caster.

 I thought I may have  about 25lb and was surprised when the scalesman called out 33.2, so second on the day and 12oz has cost me 650 quid as it's basically a winner take all match, so well done mike, probably the only person on the match to fish the waggler nearly all through.

The weigh sheets below will show that the fishery had a bit of an off day for silvers, this crappy weather isn't really helping to be sure, but it's going to warm up a bit this week, hopefully the weather men will be right about this.