wes open , acorn lakes, paddock

the good weds turnouts are continuing as 25 booked in today which is a nice number on paddock lake as it means everyone has an empty peg on at least one side, i let mat tomes draw for me and he handed me peg 13 which won the match the day before with 80lb ish, on meat at 4 mtrs, trouble was i had to contend with des shipp on 12 which is an end peg going into a corner and with the wind blowing into it the peg was always going to be good, and he took a bit of pleasure pointing out the fish mooching about on the surface and in the edge(writing on the wall then). i,d planned on a bit of a caster attack today so with that in mind i set up a .5 fig with an 18 6313 on .12 for 4mtrs and a 4x10 with a 16 6313 on .14 for over and down the edge, also a meat rig for 10 mtrs with a 16 8313 on .14 for 10 mtrs, i had john dursley (taunton,s finest import lol)on 15 who was going for an all out meat attack. at the start i began at 4 mtrs on caster whereas des went straight over on meat and john began at 4 mtrs on meat, the first hour was a bit slow for me and all i had was 2 smallish carp and a handfull of skimmers ans allready i was behind the anglers either side, by now i should have gone to the meat line as there seemed to be a fair bit of fizzing going on, so what do i do ,i go the far side and try and catch on caster there, and that was a bit of a disaster as by the end of the 2nd hour i had only added another 4 carp and a few more silvers, so i dropped back onto the 10 mtr line and the first 2 drops produced a skimmer and a carp. although i was starting to catch a few i was still behind john and des so i started feeding meat over the 4mtr caster line and it wasnt long before a few bubbles started to appear, so i changed the hook on the silver rig to a 14 6313 and basically spent the rest of the match on that line, feeding meat by a tosspot after every fish (or when i remembered, its an age thing)and i caught quite steadily up till the end of the match and with john suffering a long dry spell i managed to go past him, but i was never going to catch des as by now he was fishing 13 mtrs tight in down his margin with whole worm over caster and his peg was getting stronger towards the end with the fish ripping his elastic out, i could also see anton page on 1, nick collier on 36 and chris davis on 5 catching well so with first place already booked the minor places were all to play, as expected des shipp won with 179.1 peg 12
2nd was me with 139.2 peg 13
3rd chris davis 133.2 peg 5
4th anton page 124.15 peg 1
5th nick collier 115.13 peg 36
6th john dursley 106.2 peg 15
silvers
dean malin 51.15 peg 9, mainly skimmers with a couple of tench on caster at 4 mtrs
2nd phil harding 50.8 peg 31
the lake fished very well with the average weight being over 66lb and thats with 5 dnm,s so the average would have been closer to 70lb if they had weighed.