Avalon, Sunday 26th September

If yesterday was bad, today was not much of an improvement, I think I'll give coarse fishing a miss tomorrow and take the floppy rods and woolly hooks out, to try and catch tea - well maybe.... it's my birthday on Monday, so the pub and a curry seems more likely, the trout might have to wait until Tuesday.

The drawing arm let me down again today, as all the top weights came from the LH bank, whilst those of us on the RH side, struggled. I had pulled peg 32, with no one on 33, I couldn't complain about the space. As we were tackling up, the wind started and it was apparent that the waggler wasn't much of an option as the surface was towing to the car park end at a great rate of knots.

I set the wagglers up anyway (full depth and shallow) and a straight lead, as the end of the island looked like it should be home to hordes of hungry carp. I also set up 3 pole rigs, a 1g preston green with an olivette to fish maggot on the deck and two MW diamonds, one for soft pellet, corn or meat and another the same with a hair rigged band for hard pellet.

I started on the lead and had a carp within the first 7 minutes, I then had a small carp (into the silvers net, but it's so wrong, should have a separate net for small carp!!), then a skimmer and the last action of the first hour was a wrap round bite, and a fish trying to get to the snag on the end of the island, I held on and the 0.17 hooklength snapped!! That was the end of any bites or liners on the lead.

I'd fed some softened micro and 6mil pellets at 14.5m and dropped in over that with 6mm soft pellet, this resulted in a couple of skimmers, ringing the changes to maggot or 6mm hard pellet saw a couple more skimmers into the net. I then had a spell where I hooked and lost 13 carp, some were foul hookers, some probably not, by 1.30 I had to walk down to Tony Rixon, before I lost the plot (or my temper). I returned after 10 minutes and immediately lost two more, I set up another rig, with only 2 No9 stotz down the line at 2/3 depth, but I couldn't get a bite on this. Back in with the on the deck rig and another fouler hooked and lost..... I tried altering the way I fed, what I fed, the amount and so on, all to no avail,

I picked up the shallow waggler and third chuck hooked a decent fish, which turned and ran, I held it and then it was gone, the PR36 (16) snapped clean in half (on a 0.17 hooklength), I wasn't sure which rod or pole to jump on first!!

A couple more skimmers near the end and a carp hooked and landed finished the day off, with a chance of sneaking into the silvers money by default - according to Tony's dodgy reckoning. Even that was scuppered by Tom Magnol, who beat me by 5oz and half his silvers were carp!! How does that work?

A frustrating day, the fish were there in enough numbers to have picked up money, but I just couldn't work out how to get them to take the hookbait. Feeding? Hookbait? Presentation - I wish I knew.

1) P Wild 105.07 peg 20
2) D Malin 78.12 peg 7
3) C Hudson 75.11 peg 1
4) P Elmes 73.08 peg 12
5) B Hagg 62.02 peg 13
6) M Lenaghon 61.00 peg 24

Silvers

1) S Seager 16.12 peg 19
2) D Malin 14.08 peg7
3) T Magnol 11.15 peg 21(Boo, half of the 'silvers' were carp less than 1lb)
4) C Fox 11.10 peg 32