Thursday over 50,a huntstrete, bridge pool

Had breakfast on my own today at the Toby inn carvery in whitchurch village, and as normal it was very nice too, 4.25 on the rixster scale.
Again it only took ten minutes to get to the fishery, ideal.
24 fishing today, which is about as many as you would like to put in this lake,(bridge pool).
Early into the draw bag as I was doing some of the recording, and out comes disc 30, a peg up on the left bank and first peg on the  last island, a good peg, both silvers and carp, so a choice to be made,
So I decided to target the silvers initially while I fed a pellet line across to the island, well nearly to the island as it was 19 mtrs wide here, so I only went to 17.5, which is far enough to be fair. So I set a couple of rigs to fish pellet on the deck in about 5 foot of water, also a shallow rig for the same line, a margin rig for pellet, never had a bite on that, and a silver,s rig for 11 mtrs.

For company I had Jeff Francis to my left, and bathampton legend hughie Evans to my right, and just to cap it off I had to look at Mike Jones and Jimmy (calamity) norris, who was going to entertain us in the last half of the match.
At the start I cupped in some balls of groundbait with worm and caster in, began fishing 4mm hard pellet on the 17 mtr line, but began on a piece of work over the groundbait, it took a while to get a bite , and that resulted in an f1, I stick with this line probably longer than I should of, as I only had about 5 lb of silvers and a few f1,s, and as we stop after three hours to weigh the carp, (club rules), then begin again. So with 90 minutes I went into the 17mtr line, shallow to begin with, and I caught f1,s straight away, and I had a a nice time fishing about 18 inches deep, then for some reason I couldn't get a bite up in the water, so I went on the deck, and the peg got a bit stronger towards the end of the first three hours, I also had a nice common just into double figures, so after three hours I weighed just over 40lb, and fully expected to carry on in the second half as the first half had ended,
So when the whistle went for the second half, I was straight out feeding 4,s with a banded 6, fishing on the drop at full depth, but I couldn't get a bite, and no one else seem seemed to be fairing any better, it probably took me nearly an hour to start putting a few bites together, the f1,s had disappeared , so I switched to feeding 6,s and fishing with a banded 8mm  on the hook, this worked , as I began getting small proper carp, and not an f1 in sight. It was about now when calamity norris began performing, fishing down his margin, Jimmy began hooking a few, his first was in the mouth, but after that I don't think he had one any where near the front end, he did land a nice fish , probably over ten pounds, but he made a right hash of transferring it to his keepnet, and it fell back the wrong side, then he lost several more after that, even one which went around the legs of the empty pellet next to him, my side's were hurting at one stage as I was laughing to much.

By the end I hadn't added to my silvers tally, and I thought I had about 40lb of carp, so I was a Bit surprised when they went 48lb , and with my first half 40lb and over 5lb of silvers I ended with a level 94lb,

Beating Paul haines into second who had just over 80lb, but he was a bit unfortunate as he lost 16 carp to some underwater snag on the island, 

Too silver weight was taken by steve Dawson on peg 10 with 35lb  of skimmers, a nice net of silvers on a day when the silvers didn't really want to feed.

Weigh sheets below, there were a fair number of fish caught , but some areas were a lot harder, although a lot of venues seem a little off the pace in recent weeks,