Barston fundraiser

I had to change my day off this week , which was ok as I could now fish the fundraiser at barston, so I picked Chris fox up at 6, and we found ourselves pulling into the premier inn car park just before 8 for breakfast, an eat what you like affair, and it was nice , 4.75.
Got to the good club in plenty of time for the draw, and it was.good to see anglers from all over the place supporting this cause , as the ladies are self funding, and it's not cheap fishing these international events.
We got into what we thought was the draw queue earlyish, only for Julie Abbott to have the draw somewhere else, so now we were towards the back, 😂.
watching the pegs coming out I was happy to see to section on the 50,a still in the bucket when we got to the , so I pull out 109 and Chris in the 20,s, I had a quick chat with Mark poppleton and Mark wynne who both confirmed I had very little chance of winning, it's shallower on that bank, so they suggested a day skimmer fishing with the chance of picking up a few of the big f1,s aswell, I had a couple of locals around me one of which was one away from where he drew at the weekend and the section was won with 30lb, my peg looked good with an island at 100mtrs plus , I don't want to it have the equipment to cast that far, I left the beach gear at home.

So with skimmers in mind I set up a .25g fibre stemmed float with an 18 b960 for banded 6mm hard pellet over loose fed 4,s, most people fish corn for skimmers here but I decided to go down the pellet approach.
I set up a shallow rig aswell , and two waggler rods one for depth and a pellet wag, to fish at 25 mtrs, on the all in I cupped in some 4,s at 14 mtrs and some at 6mtrs as it was the same depth, also started feeding 8,s on the wag line,
Beginning on the pole line I soon had a a few skimmers lining up, it was shallow , only 3 foot deep, enjoyable fishing. After a while the side wind increased pushing the rig through to quickly, so I  decided to change to a wire stem 4x14 , so I through the wag out while changing rigs, chucked past my feed, tried to sink my line and couldn't move the float , mainly due to the fact there was a 10lb common attached to the end which had taken the pellet as soon as the rig hit the water, so after landing that I decided to give it a bit longer, but that was my only bite on it, so I was soon back in the pole, and the wire stem float was much better, I caught skimmers on and off right to the end, along with 2 big f1,s and a 4lb ghostie, the only other anglers I thought we're catching was Jason dunworth to my left and Connor Beresford next to him again, listening to them during the match I thought they had both beaten me, I weighed in before then and thought my 4 carp would go about 18lb and I hoped for 50lb of skimmers, I wasn't to far out as the carp weighed 20lb and the skimmers went 55.8, for a total 75.8, Jason had 64.8 and I just edged out Connor who had 74.8. So a section win which would have to do, as most of the carp had moved down into the 50,s with Pete Bailey having a massive weight on the day with 240lb+, and that section gave up the top three weights on the day, I was fourth on the day but all the money was paid out in the sections.

Well done to Julie for organising these matches I think she managed to raise over £1500 over the two days as there was a match at the glebe the day before, so well done to all who took part and contributed, I bought some raffle tickets but as is normal a few won most of the prizes, I did get one of my numbers called right at the end and won a run of frenzied hemp with snails in it, probably the same as winning the Christmas pudding at an Xmas match raffle lol.
So no fishing now till Sunday  I'm running a match at Landsend fishery, still got spaces so get in touch of you fancy it, also with temps to possibly hitting 39c on Thursday I'm glad I changed this week.