14 of us on this one so plenty of room as we had the whole of Moat lake booked.
I drew peg 1 which I was not overly enthusiastic about as a low weight had come from it on our previous visit and when I drew the same peg a couple of years ago I had struggled too.
I started by feeding a good helping of corn at 11m a little to my left and a few pellets at 11m to the right, I then fished the method feeder to open water hoping to catch a few before looking on the pole lines. I caught a few small carp of around a pound or so and one around 3lb on the feeder but this then went very quiet so I started to try the pole.
No bites over the corn except a few small roach, no bites over the pellets! Back on the feeder for a while.
A couple of hours into the match I decided to start feeding the margin to my right with a few big pots of groundbait and some dead maggots. After trying the pole for a while with the same fruitless result, I could see that a few carp had arrived in the margin, I decided to leave them alone for a bit longer so tried the feeder again for a few casts, picking up another small carp or two.
NOW, time to see if my feeding and patience was going to pay off, on to the pole in the margin with a big bunch of dead maggots on the hook. I started catching steadily and potted in groundbait and maggots after every few carp, the roach were a bit of a nuisance but I just kept going. The roach issue was getting worse and I foul hooked a carp too so I decided to but a large frenzee soft pot on the pole and each put in I used this to feed with a hard ball of groundbait in the hope that it would help to keep the carp feeding on the bottom, this seemed to work fairly well and I continued to catch a few decent size carp.
In the last hour things slowed down, I only had 2 or 3 carp in this time.
I guessed I might have 70lb, when the scales reached me Stan was top with 78lb so I was hopng to be close to that but did not think I would be beating him.
My total was 67lb which was 2nd at that stage behind Stan so now I would just have to see if I got pushed down a position or two by the other anglers on the rest of the low numbers bank, top weight for the rest was 65lb so very close but I had done enough for 2nd.
Stan's club match report and the full results can be seen HERE.