Silvers pairs, final round

Back to Huntstrete and withy pool for the last round of the dave gillard pairs extravaganza, silvers matches, me and my.partner, andy gard were lying second behind the pairing of andy greenham and tony ponting, who were favourites to win, but second was fairly safe barring any serious slip ups, dave got the draw underway, and as its an open draw its good if you can avoid drawing the same section as your partner, into the draw and i pull out 65 which is on the point in front of the containers, good draw, then my partner pulls out 66, so same.section and next.to each other, not ideal. To my right was paul(cous cous) clayton, Only two rigs today, a .4slim for the short line, topset and two, and a .75 bodied wire stem for the longer lines, a bit of a heavier rig than normal, but the forecast was for strong gusty winds and light rain at times, at the start i fed groundbait at 9 mtrs in front and a line at 11 mtrs to my left, then some soaked micros a 11 mtrs in front, nothing to far out as the wind was going to make life and presentation difficult. i like to start short so i did as normal, but 20 minutes in and no bites, along with paul to my right having 4 skimmers in that time , i was reaching for the heavier rig, out at 9 mtrs with single maggot, i had a roach a small perch, then a nice 12oz skimmer, most of the match was spent swapping between the three li longernger lines, picking off a couple of skimmers or a decent roach before having to go to one of the other lines, i did keep trying the short line,but only had two bites there, i had a pound and a half perch, then pulled the hook out of another, and that was my only indications i had there, quite unusual as i normally have some nice roach from that line, but not today.but i had enough bites from the longer lines so i was happy.enough, mostly skimmers between 4 and 12oz, but i did get a 2lb fish which was a bonus, but ended up with 16lb which was enough to win the section and be first on the day.

My partner had a torrid day on my right with less than 2lb, but we did enough to stay second, andy and tony making no mistakes coming first and second in there section, kev winstone was second from peg 40 with 14lb of mainly quality roach.