A week away at Stafford moor

Drove down to Devon after work with Judith for a week in one of the lodges at the fishery, all nice then.
Got there at about 9 ,had a coffee and had an early night, had to be up early as I was guesting in the fishery run teams of four winter league. Got up in plenty of time , and juditJ made a nice breakfast for us both, 5.25, (4.5 really). Got to the shop in plenty of time for the draw, and it.was good to meet up with some old friends that I don't see to often, and some I do when they venture further north.
I did the team draw and I ended up on peg 6 on oak, which was fine with me as it's got lots of stockie carp in it so ensuring bites in most pegs, with only 7 on the lake we all had plenty of room, to my left I had Ben evenden , and to my right was Nigel Rhodes,  I only.had hard pellets with me, but the general advice was to fish softer baits, but I wasn't going to do that as I never had any. So a pellet rig for 5mtrs , another for 13 mtrs, and another for the right hand margin in 30 inches of water against the bank.

At the start I began at 5 mtrs on banded 6 over hard 4,s, twenty minutes later and I only had .a small skimmer, by now Ben had had a few carp out in front at 13 mtrs, and Nigel to my right had also caught a few, so I was having to do something to try and catch up, so it was out on the 13 mtrs line kindering some hard 4,s with 6 on the hook , and luckily I began to get a few, then I got a bit to excited with the feed and got the catty out , big mistake it got them off the deck, bugger , foulers, back to kindering, but the damage was done, although I was landing some correctly hook fish I lost several foulers, about 90 minutes from the end I had a light bulb moment and started potting some 6,s and fishing an 8 in the band, this seemed to help as I got little runs of two and three fish, which was helping me keep up with the also rams on the lake, as Ben and Nathan Underwood who opposite Ben on 12 were going to be first and second on the lake, both were catching into the margins along the dam wall, with Ben fishing a really tidy match and was always going to be the clear winner on this lake, my highlight was to catch the oak lake goldfish, a really bright red fish that seems to come out fairly regularly, according to the official photographer, at the fishery, Rob coomdes.

As it turned out on the day ,oak was the place to be if it was some bites you were after, with Ben winning the lake with 124.15, and Nathan second with 98lb, I managed to.scrape third on the lake with just over 70lb, beating have Bruton by about a pound, must have been the gold fish, lol. Lake weigh sheet below.

Monday Judith and me went to Ilfracombe to try and catch some wrasse off the see wall, we got there only.to find a bit of a swell running which in turn was making the water surge in and out along the wall, which in turn had coloured the water and kept washing.any.rig into the snags, all very annoying and costly, I did manage one wrasse about a pound with some small Pollack.,

Judith had a new friend though in the shape of an immature cormorant which seems is a regular visitor to the quay, and only.to willing to eat from your hand, at.least this is one cormorant which is where it should be.

So we packed up and headed up to the valley of the rocks as Judith had never been there, and I had only.driven through there to fish a stupid mark on the north Devon coast a few years back with the ducketts from landsend and Dean, so we had a bit of a look around and climbed to the top and took a selfie looking back down to woody bay, why is it that selfies always come out back to front, it was a bit breezy up there mind .