Two matches, two days

I was meant to be fishing with a customer on Wednesday but he had a bit of a wobble and ended up in hospital,  he's ok so that's good, so I booked into Todber for the Wednesday open, travelled on my own and had a breakfast in the riverside cafe just outside Gillingham, it was nice but a bit expensive, 4.25 , cannards for me in future. Got to the venue and found over 20 fishing so we were spread over hillview and ash, I fancied a peg on hillview, and wasn't to disappointed when I saw 53 on my ticket, a  ice corner peg on the right hand side of the spit.

I does look good with good margins either side, and at the moment the margins are the place to fish.

It's the last round of the short pole match on Sunday on this lake , so I was only.ever.going to fish close, so a drug for our in front at.topset and two, a shallow rig just in case , and a rig for.the margins each side.

I was only going to fish pellet , 8,s over 6,s in front and again 8,s over 4,s in each margin. 

At the start I began out in front, had a few , lost more, foulers, I persevered with it, and it did improve with less fouling , so I stuck with it hoping the margins would come good, our side of the lake seemed to be fishing harder then the other half, but I started to get some in the margins in the last couple of hours , and as the match drew to an end I couldn't get I quick enough, on the all I thought I had at least 170 which was ok this half of the lake, but with a few other anglers admitting to over 200lb, the best I could hope for would be a section win, and that's how it panned out , my nets went 190lb, which was only good enough for 6th on the day,

 Vince Brown on peg 48 came.out on top with over 230lb, catching short in front at the start , then work or maggot over groundbait down the edge.

Weigh sheets below

 Onto Thursday and I was off to Shiplate farm for the Thursday costcutter. I got into the draw bucket first and out comes the best peg in Somerset, peg 1, lol, of what I could see the majority of the anglers.today were going to be targeting the skimmers and bream , if which the lake holds a good amount of, peg one is a lovely peg which has everything, and island of you want it , open water , a lovely margin to the right and a bag to the right which holds lots of fish.

So I set up a rig for on the deck out in front at 14 mtrs, another for on the deck to the right in the entrance to the bay, a shallow rig and a margin rig, again just peeled on the side tray, 4,s for the margins and 6,s for the long lines, not to much to right about to be honest, I've had a simple.match, began on the deck and had a couple of carp, then liners , so out shallow and started.to get some.carp, then went down into the 3mtr to the bay and had a similar response, a couple on the deck, then liners , so out shallow and kept catching , I can't fault the tourney pro x pole, I've had it bent in frightening angles.today as fish tried to get back into the bay, not to many poles on the market.you can do that with. I've had him Thomas sat with the me for most of the match, and we've had a good day chatting and having a laugh. At the end I had 235 on the clicker but I was aware.I had over.clicked just to be safe, I was last.to weigh and was.happy to have caught 222lb, John andres.on 11 had 168lb for.second, silvers went to Gary flinders on peg 12a with over 75lb of skimmers on corn, got a picture of Shiplate steve holding the weigh sheet in his shed.

And a.readable weigh sheet is below as normal.and below that , todays.entertainment comes.from Claude Jacobs who had his top 4 pulled off half an hour from the end, but he managed.to retrieve it only to snap his topkit whilst playing the carp ,  but  Fairplay he got it back, even though it had covered the whole lake in that 30 minutes.

So two good days on two good venues and over 400lb of fish aswell, can't be bad, roll on sunday.