Landsend Open Saturday 14th May

I'd already decided to fish for silvers as soon as I booked in for this one. Perhaps not the wisest way to approach a match.....

17 fished, so the match lake and the back bank of the specimen lake were used, I drew peg 7. Once I got to the peg I could see that the far bank looked fairly inviting for carp, so rather than stick to my all out silvers attack, I did set up one MW cookie on 0.17 /0.15 to a 18 B960 with a hair rigged band - just in case!!

The other rigs were my usual silvers attack, a Malman winter wire on 0.13 to 0.11 and a 18 63-13, a sensal pencil on 0.11/0.10 and a 20 63-13 and one that I never seem to catch on, a MW slim power on 0.13/0.11 with a 18 808 for devils spawn (soft pellet).

Caster was to be the main line of attack, at 7m and topset, soft pellet went in at 13m to my left towards the gap, that produced one decent skimmer and nothing else, so no more to say abouit that. The 7m line produced a few small perch and a couple of decent F1's, before a switch to the topkit line brought some bigger perch on double caster. It seemed to be fishing hard, although I could only see 19 opposite, the anglers on my bank weren't exactly bagging.

By the half way point, the silvers action had slowed and a few carp were showing themselves up on the far shelf (the water seems to be down 18" or so). The fish were 16m away, towards the gap, I had been pinging a few 6mm's over and decided it was time for a look. The gusting, swirling wind, which apart from making the pencil float useless, hadn't affected the 7m and topkit lines, but it was virtually impossible to present a bait properly at 16m. I stuck at it a while and had 5 carp, but it was getting more and more difficult to present and my back was suffering.

Back on the silvers and I had another carp on th topkit line, another F1 and a couple more perch before the all out. I'd managed to put myself one out of the silvers money by 1lb and one out of the overall money by 2lb 15oz - well done for not sticking to one or the other!!

Specimen lake produced a few munters to take the top spot, with the opposite bank to me on match lake making up the frame.

1) Dan White 88.13 peg 31
2) Rod Wootton 80.09 peg 19
3) Scott Puddy 77.14 peg 19
4) Tom Mangnall 60.00 peg 24
=5) Mike West 54.08 peg 13
=5) Tom Thick 54.08 peg 33
7) Chris Fox 51.09

Silvers

1) Tom Thick 22.00 peg 33
2) Tom Mangnall 19.12 peg 24
3) Chris Fox 18.12 peg 7