Huntstrete over 50,s , bridge pool

Back to huntstrete again today for this popular fixture, but not until I have had my breakfast in the Toby inn carvery in whitchurch, and an added bonus today was that I was joined by my good friend Tony Harding, who is over here from South Africa sorting a few things out, also be is going to spend the day with me which has made my day even more enjoyable.

After the breakfast we drove the short way.to the lake's and found out 22 were fishing, a nice number,
I thought about letting Tony draw for me but thought better of it, as his drawing arm was never that good, so got in to the bag quite early and pulled out peg 26, another island peg, but still over 16.5 mtrs, and with a nasty gusty wind it was going to be a tough day, I set up a couple of rigs for the island, one on top of the shelf and the other about 2 foot off in about 3 foot of water, the shallow rig would also do for fishing down to empty peg 25, I also set.up a rig to fish hard pellet short in case I had to fish for some skimmers.

Its.an awkward swim as it's close to 27 which was occupied by rod dufferty, it took a while.to sort out the rollers but it was ok in the end, I went high and rod went low, to my right was silvers ace steve.Dawson on 24.
At the start I went across to the island on the slightly deeper rig, and caught and overhanging branch first cast, much to tony,s amusement, so rig up again, back out avoiding the branch and I soon have a carp in the net, followed by an f1, then it went quiet, I couldn't get a bite, but presentation was terrible with a strong left to right wind, with no bite forthcoming on the deeper rig I went closer in on the shallow rig, and had a few more small carp and f1,s, but I was finding it nearly impossible to hold the rig still, I could get bites of the wind dropped meaning the rig was staying stillish, but it didn't happen to often. The half time weigh in gave.me.23lb , not to good but more than most at this stage.
The second half started.pretty much the same as the first half ended , with me fighting the wind with 17 mtrs.of carbon, I new there fish to be had against the island, but the wind had strengthened, making it even harder to fish, I had been feeding down the edge in front of 25, and in the last half.of the second half.of the match a few better fish turned up down there in about 10 inches of water, so by the end I thought I had just over 50 lb in this half,  I new Mike nicholls had had a reasonable second half on 21, as had Paul barnfield on 14, other than that I hadn't seen to many others catch, apart  from steve.Dawson who had caught some nice skimmers and a few carp fishing over to the shallow water towards the island, we started.with Steve ., And he had a nice net of skimmers which went 29lb which was enough to win the silvers on the day, well done.

I weighed next and ended up with 81lb which was enough to come first overall, definatley got beaten by the weather as far as fishing to the island , but luckily those better margin fish made all the difference today.

Mike nicholls was second with about 61lb and Barney was third with a smaller 61lb, it didn't fish as well as  previous weeks but we had a lot of rain diluting the night and the wind beat most of us, Tony enjoyed.his day especially the numerous mistakes.and schoolboy errors he witnessed, lol.
Weigh sheets below.