With the ponds being small there are only 16 entrants but only 10 were present for the first round and most were Spring Pond regulars.
Speaking with most people the end pegs were the ones to draw and with peg 1 being the bonus peg everyone expected the bonus peg to go and when Mike Smith drew the peg everyone thought it would be a dead cert to go with Mike being an excellent angler and winner of the last League and peg 1 winning the last open with 59lb.
Smithy on peg 1
I drew peg 2 not the best peg on the lake and the chance to watch Mike bag up didn't fill me with joy but nothing ventured nothing gained and I started to set up my gear for the day.
I set up a bomb line for the far bank just left of the tree and 4 pole rigs 1 for and 1 for pellet at 13 Mtr's and top 5 as I had the same depth at both a Margin rig for my left hand side and a silvers rig for top 2 plus 2 for the larger roach that inhabited this lake.
Bait for the day would be meat & Pellet for the carp and sweetcorn for the silvers although I never used this rig. If I had maggots I would have been on it so a lessoned learned there.
The all in was called and I cast the lead ot outwith a 6mm pellet sunk the line and sat back for all of 10 seconds when the tip wrapped round and my first carp was on a si got it closer I realised I hadn't got my landing net so faffed around and landed a small common with just the head of the net.
A quick recast and landing net assembled I sat back and waited thinking I was in for a good day how wrong could I be.
After fifteen minutes and no bites I had a quick look on my 13 mtr line, Mike on peg 1 ( who was so confident of catching the carp in the margins He didn't set up a bomb rod) was just telling me how he was having a bad patch of losing his first fish in comps when he duly hooked and lost his first fish I was watching and giggling when my float buried I struck late felt resistance but then it was off.
Jason on peg 4 had started to catch a few small carp and MR H on 6 was rotating his catches with fish and then a bush.
Mike landed his next carp and I had another in the first hour but it seemed it may be a slow day.
Jason on peg 4 then set about emptying the lake and after 2 hours had around 15 carp to my 5 with Mike and MR H on similar Gaz on peg 8 was yet to catch anything of note and it seemed Jason's Brother was copying him as he was the only 1 catching regularly on pond 2.
If I had maggots I would have started going for silvers as I couldn't seem to get a run of carp but without them I struggled on.
Myself and Mike then seemed to get plagued by Gudgeon even on 6 or 8 mm pellet.
Mike relented and set up a bomb rod which lasted 15 minutes as he lost 2 carp in the far reeds so changed to a small waggler which also lasted around 15 minutes.
With 90 minutes left I landed a lovely 5Lb common which put me on 9 carp and clear in second place but that was to be my last fish as broken rigs and small Gudgeon frustrated me.
Mike and MR H both had late fish and I thought I may have slipped down to fourth
The all out was called and Gaz weighed 11lb MR h then weighed 21lb Jason hada lovely bag weighing 53lb including a 8lb 2oz beauty I weighed 15lb and Mike had 20lb so thelate fish did cost me.
Pond 2's weights were similar with Elliot getting 47lb then it went down to 20lb and 14lb.
Not the best start but will take the positives and will definitely take some maggots next time.
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