Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Staunton Court, 24 May (14 pegs)

As usual the first port of call today was the Watersmeet Hotel for breakfast which is always a good start to the day.

14 fishing so Will pegged 5 on the concrete bank, 5 on the grass and 2 on each end paying out first and second overall, one silvers and two sections.

Some eyebrows were raised at the inclusion of a silvers payout but no concerns from me even though I wouldn't be targeting them.

I drew 14 which put me on the bottom end bank next to Contraversial Chris (Gay) on 13 and Kev Jefferies on peg 1 which was the first peg on the concrete bank.

There were a lot of fish swirling within pole range which was a good sign and the shallow margins in front of Chris were also full of active fish but over in the corner (the famous bin peg) that was occupied by Lee Williams there was a full scale carp orgy going on in the reeds which is never a good sign.

Lots of options in this peg, obviously open water out in front, a long reed lined margin to the left and I remember Ryan Radford drawing it once and breaking his no4 section early on but he caught well later in that match on his topkit so that was another option to think about.

Pole only today so I set up a shallow rig for banded 8's, a deep rig for the same, and a rig for corn tight to the reeds down to the left where it was 2½ feet deep.

Chris had set up pretty much the same but had also set up a kit with a method feeder stuck to the end of it ... contraversial as ever!

He had mentioned earlier that it would take 200lbs to win today, I got the impression he meant he was up for that but he reckoned otherwise, however he was keen to have a pound with me but with a possible £3 loss on the cards for me already (Alan, Adam and Lee) I declined and he had one with Lee instead, in hindsight I should have taken him up on his generous offer.

Bait today was 8mm pellets, corn and 4mm's for the margin and some cubed meat which never got used.

After feeding a pot of 8mm's at 11m and some corn and 4's down the edge I started out on the shallow rig at 11m.

The pellet was under constant attack from bottle-top sized skimmers but I managed to snare a couple of carp quite quickly on this before it went quiet.

Chris had gone straight into his margin where there were still fish swirling but this was only producing skimmers and even the deadly pole/method combination didn't offer up any carp.

Lee had also gone down the margin but was only getting scales.

I kept plugging away with the shallow rig for the first hour and that took me up to four fish from about 400 false bites.

The pole line was by now fizzing like a jacuzzi so I tried the deep rig but that gave more of the same bites from tiny silvers so I didn't persist with it.

I had a look down the edge with a grain of corn on the hook and got the same result but I was hooking some better skimmers down there but they were coming off on the way back due to the heavy elastic so a change of plan was required and I fired a couple of pouches of 4's and corn into the margins while I dug out a lighter rig on light elastic to target these until the carp turned up.

Chris had all but given up on carp and was catching good sized skimmers in his margins.

My attempt at silvers fishing didn't last too long.

After about 10 minutes the float buried accompanied by a huge swirl and 20yds of green knicker elastic headed off towards Kev Jefferies before bottoming out accompanied by another big swirl before something gave way and the rig returned with a little pigtail of line where the hook should have been .... bugger!

I went back down there with the heavier gear but nothing followed.

By now we were past halfway but the only person really doing any good was Keith Ray up in peg 8 on the top end of the grass bank.

Alan Healey on 7 was virtually blanking and getting a lot of stick and Mark Radford wasn't doing much better judging by the moaning coming from his end of the lake.

Most others were on 3 or 4 fish although Contraversial Chris reckoned Lee had a few more than that, the whole lake was fishing badly.

At this point Adam Caswell on peg 9 hit a bit of a purple patch and started catching a few refugees from Keith's peg on his shallow line and making sure everyone in earshot knew about it which was handy as I went back out at 14m shallow and managed to put another 10 carp in the net ... Adam went a bit quiet again after that.

As Keith had by now easily won the match and it was looking to be between myself and Lee Williams for 2nd and we were both admitting to 14 carp although he had one at the death which was a proper net-stretcher.

As expected Keith won it with 110-10 catching on meat and paste down the edge.

Lee's "14" carp went 100-4 for second and you can read all about that here
My nets totalled 78-0 for 3rd (and the section) but I wasn't bitter in the slightest!

Silvers went to Contraversial Chris with 28-0 of skimmers.

Full Result: