Thursday costcutter at huntstrete bridge pool

A nice close one today, and with Judith home we had a breakfast in a new venue today, poppy,s cafe in East dundry lane, and it was nice, a good 4.5 on the scale.
dropped Judith back home after, then took the 15 minute drive to the fishery. 20 fishing today so plenty of room, hopefully, paid my money and had a quick look at the pegging , only pegs I didn't fancy we're 17 and 18, mainly as they are opposite each other going into a bay effectively cutting each other off, I did have a bit of a moan but was met with the normal, it's a good swim I can remember when so and so had this and that off it, but not in recent years, those fish are probably dead by now , so into the draw bag, and yes peg 18 comes out, luckily the organiser was on 20, so I was able to give him a bit of stick for most of the match lol, but I know Mike Jones can take it, fortunately he is a bit deaf,

I had ray bazeley opposite on the other side of the bay, only about 19 mtrs away, so neither of us would be using more than 13 mtrs of pole out in front so as not to interfere with each other.

The margins can be ok on this peg, with a bush to my left and a long margin to my right going into the bay, you can't go to far into the bay on the right as there is a rope going across the lake to stop you going into the bay, also there is a large wooden obstruction just past the rope to act as a fish refuge, the idea being that as soon as a cormorant or any other predator gets on to the lake, the fish have learnt to go and hide in the refuge, hmmmm. Any way a picture of each side margin is below.

I set up one rig as it would do both sides in about 3 foot of, a rig to fish various baits over groundbait on the longer lines and a short caster rig. At the start I fed groundbait on three lines, 11 mtrs straight out, one off the end of the bush to my left and another at 5 mtrs in front, started feeding caster to my left about halfway up the inside shelf, and it was still over 3foot there , the lake is over 7 foot deep here. I started on the groundbait line out in front , which I had put some soaked micros in, with a soft pellet, no bite so I switched to a maggot, a small roach was the reward, followed by a couple more, back on the soft pellet and I fouled a 1lb skimmer in the wing, a long way off the bottom, not like me is it ha ha. I did lose another one shortly after, which WAS hooked correctly.
That was my lot on that line, except for odd plippy roach, so I came into the 4 mtr line and the other by the tree, I had another skimmer and a few roach in front, a some chunky little roach by the tree, but the bites wouldn't keep coming, it was the same on the short caster line, a few fish then nothing, towards the end of the first half I had a look down by the tree and had a couple of  f1,s on banded pellet, although I had been feeding 4,s I would normally have fished a 6 in the band, but today and 8 was definitely better, we had the usual short break and on the restart I just fished for carp, I did make another rig up during the break to fish pellet halfway across the rope in the deep water, and I did get few small proper carp there along with the a few more f1,s from the shallower water. Although I was unlikely to win from the peg I felt I did ok, I think I would have had a few more of I had not had Ray opposite, but then again I may have had less, you never know. Top on the day was Dave wride on peg 27 with over 60lb , that's his third win on the trot at this venue, well done, Alan oram and peg 21 was 2nd with 50+, too silvers weight to Paul barnfield on peg 14 with just shy of 32lb, weigh sheets below.