Plantations, Coarse Lake, 23 March (18 pegs)

18 fishing today, then 19 and then back to 18 (confused? So was I)!
Anyway, 18 is about as many as you would want as although there are officially 40ish pegs available, due to the unusual shape of the lake a lot of pegs clash with each other and it's not an easy one to peg out.

I had spent a long while on Saturday night trying to sort 18 pegs out from the above map but it's quite old and doesn't really represent the lake as it is now.

Fortunately Chris Gay, who knows the venue really well (his words, not mine) kindly volunteered to sort the pegging while I enjoyed my breakfast courtesy of Karen in the Plantations cafe and after three laps of the lake we were sorted!

For a change today the payout was to be  top 2 plus 3 sections and despite Kev Jefferies being down at Emerald on Tony Rixon's match, just the one Silvers pool.

So, following last week's catastrophe at Viaduct I made sure I saved the last number for myself and I wasn't disappointed as it revealed peg 1, the shortest walk and a corner with the wind blowing into it (it could have been worse)!

For company I had Adam Caswell in peg 3 who was well happy as I had let him have the whole of my left margin.

Up from Adam were Chris Szakacs in 4 and my replacement travelling partner in the fishing bus, Stewart Riddle in 5 followed by Rich Jones in 7 and Alan Healey in 8.

Alan was looking very confident as he was armed with some hi-tec groundbait mix that looked expensive ..... I don't think he will be wasting the kids' KFC fund on that again in a hurry!

Across from me on 38 was Darren North and over on the far side I could make out Simon Belcham and one of our new members, Lee Williams.

My peg seemed fairly straightforward as with the wind blowing into it and no island to snag up on it was going to be a margin job into the corner.

I also set up a rig for 13m to plunder the skimmers for a couple of hours while the corner margin was being primed.

Chris Szakacs wandered round and suggested a long chuck with a method feeder over towards the edge which apparently  does well here  but I wasn't keen  and was fairly confident of getting a few down the edge on corn.

On the start I put 3 balls of caster-laden groundbait in at 13m, another at 14.5 and fed the margin with a cocktail of caster, corn, 4mm pellet and groundbait.

Out to 13m and sure enough, absolutely nothing! So I stuck with it for an hour or so mucking around wth shotting and different baits and still the float never even trembled.

In the meantime, Darren had started off chucking a wag to the island and had snared a carp more or less straight away but it came off at the net,
Lee looked to be in a similar position to myself and I couldn't see much going on to my left other than Chris Szakacs getting one or two fish from the island.

Adam had hooked one on the pole line that snapped the end of his topkit but he got it in but that was all he had by the midway point.

I had by now given up on the long line and was fishing at 5m and next to my keepnet with single caster getting odd tiny roach but missing most bites which was annoying so in desperation I had dug out the lead rod and hurled that out with a banded 8mm on the hook to a spot between two trees on the end bank where Chris had suggested but it was too far away to feed anything in the wind and produced nothing other than sticks and branches.

I had a look on my corner margin line and again nothing but it did reveal a problem in that it was full of underwater junk that had collected over the winter.

I did notice a fish swirl a bit further along the bank, out of pole range, so I plopped the lead over in that direction and cattied a few 8mm's over the top to feed the ducks.

Adam had just come back from a wander and it seemed Ryan Radford was catching well as was Mark and Brian Shanks and a few others wre getting odd fish including "that new bloke" (Lee)

The only good news was that Alan and his devastating new groundbait were struggling.

At this point Adam asked if I had caught but before I could answer the rod tip headed round in the direction of Bullocks Farm and I had my first carp in the net.

A couple of chucks later a second carp followed which took me into double figures and out of the embarrassment zone.

I spent the last 90 minutes doing the same which gave me five more carp which I was guessing would take me to 30lbs.
My guess wasn't far off the mark with the scales giving me 31-2 which was good enough to win the section ahead of Chris Szakacs.
And, more importantly, pound coins from Alan Healey, Pete Sivvell (who packed up early moaning about a bad back), and Adam Caswell (uncollected as yet)!
The match was won by Ryan Radford from peg 11 with 73lbs caught short from his left and right margins with meat over meat and corn feed.
Unfortunately his Dad, Mark, is too tight to pay for him to go in the pools so the money went to 2nd placed Lee Williams with 66-8 caught partly on the wag and down the edge.
You can read Lee's own version of events here
The Silvers honours went to another "newbie", Chris Davis with 15-10 of skimmers on meat at 5m.

Full Result:

1. Ryan Radford (peg 11) .... 73-0
2. Lee Williams (32) ............ 66-8
3. Brian Shanks (28) ........... 62-2
4. Mark Radford (19) ........... 57-10
5. Darren North (38) ........... 31-7
6. Steve Burgess (1) ........... 31-2
7. Chris Szakacs (4) ............ 27-5
8. Chris Davis (24) .............. 20-10
9. Alan Healey (8) .............. 18-12
10. Pete Uzzell (15) .............. 16-8
11. Rich Jones (7) ................ 15-10
12. Chris Gay (29) ............... 15-9
13. Simon Belcham (31) ...... 13-8
14. Matt Challenger* (26) ..... 10-1
15. Adam Caswell (3) ........... 8-12
16. Mike Wilson (27) ............. 6-1
17. Stewart Riddle (5) .......... 1-8
18. Pete Sivell (18) .............. DNW

*golden peg

Silvers:

1. Chris Davis .......... 15-10
2. Simon Belcham ..... 13-8
3. Matt Challenger ..... 10-1
4. Pete Uzzell ........... 7-1
5. Alan Healey .......... 5-8
6. Rich Jones ............ 4-0
7. Mike Wilson ........... 3-3
8. Darren North ......... 2-10
9. Chris Gay ............. 1-10
10. Stewart Riddle ...... 1-8
11. Lee Williams ......... 0-12
12. Steve Burgess ...... 0-6

Sections:

1. Steve Burgess ...... 31-7
2. Mark Radford ....... 57-10 (default)
3. Darren North ....... 31-7 (double default) 

Next Sunday we are at Harescombe which has been producing some good results of late and with the weather looking favourable it promises to be a good match.