Todber Manor Winter League, Round 1, Sunday 5th January 2020

Got to Todber and found Mark Poppleton had sorted out the team draw, putting me on Ash 72, I was advised it was a good area as 74 had won that lake the last three matches.  Every section was going to be a tough one, some good anglers fishing this league and any mistakes would be punished.

Two lead rods set up, one to fish bomb and bread, the other for maggot feeder, a waggler rod and topkits set up to fish banded pellet on one line and maggots on the other, 14m at 10 and 2 o'clock.  I did over optimistically set up a topkit to fish meat short, but never had an indication on that, so that's the last mention of it.

Started across on bread and had a couple of fish before losing a big fish that straightened out a QM1 - foul hooked I suspect, not a hook that usually straightens. A switch to the maggot feeder brought a couple more carp and then it slowed up, further down the lake there were a couple of pegs catching well on the pole, so I switched to that and never had a bite on it, tried pellet and maggot, nothing.

A switch to the waggler and corn saw a few more fish landed, the calm day was not rippling the surface and big carp could be seen cruising up and down the far bank, but they weren't in a feeding mood, managed to get a couple more on bomb and bread in the last hour, although Steve Hutter on 74 managed 4 big lumps in the last hour and cruised to section victory, Sean on 75 had a good last couple of hours fishing to the end bank, so a miserable 4th out of 6.  Probably tried too long to catch on the waggler instead of having the patience to sit on the bomb.