Commentary by Allan Bayman:

Rudely awoken by rain at 5 something did not bode well for the day ahead. Metcheck showed cold winds and the odd blustery shower. Tyler's Common fishery is very open on the side of a hill so any strong winds would make things a bit cold and challenging trying to hang on to you pole.

The numerous carp seemed to be in an amorous mood crashing about in the margins , clearly spawning but would they be a bit peckish after their once a year 5 minutes of romance.

I’d drawn on peg 12 which was very shallow and my favourite peg 24  was taken by Matt. Young, the clubs Champion of Champions for last year. Matt is excellent at crunching out these small carp so with Stan was opposite me and Alan G off to my left with AlanT just out of sight to his left so I could see a fair bit of the lake and I knew this should be a match of big weights but how would the spawning disrupt things ?

It was clear that the surface approach would be favoured by some, It certainly normally gets the bigger fish but would the wind make things tricky ?  It’s a difficult method to master and any faults in presentation can lead to aborted takes and lots of swearing and frustration as the fish eat everything but the hookbait.

From the off I could see everyone seeming to catch fairly soon. The wind was making things hard and my favoured surface approach was proving hard as the fish were having trouble grabbing the mixers with the waves moving the bait around so I gave up on that very quickly.  Stan and Matt seemed to be catching well with AlanG fishing at his feet and catching quickly.

This was going to prove interesting. I’d been attacking both margins with regular helpings of pellets on the left margin and corn on the right and after a short time decided to fish the margin on top two in a foot of water. It was pretty much a fish a chuck but mainly very small on the pellet line but nothing on the corn line apart from one chunky f1. Alan G was rattling them in on corn over pellet and both Matt and Stan were catching well too and Ivan and Kev were catching at a considerable rate..

The switch to the inside was starting to pay of as regular feeding was getting lots of fish in the swim and some being caught on the drop.  Right next to my left hand keepnet.

Stan had his third net going in after a while so he was clearly doing well despite the wind that was making the lake look more like the sea and constantly moving my float around at times.

Half way through it looked like it would be very close with lots of people catching well. Stan was catching constantly and AlanG was getting flurries of fish after fish then a lull as was I. My earlier switch to heavy solid elastic was paying off as I was able to get my fish in quickly saving time. Matt was still constantly netting fish. His were falling to big expander pellets.

It was very hard to keep a track on who was doing what so it was likely to only become clear at the weigh in as so many were catching lots of fish.

On the causeway Roger Smith and Brian were having a peg to peg surface fishing contest. With about 45 minutes left to add to our weather related misery of gale force winds it started to rain and shortly afterwards got sunny and the wind dropped a bit and with that many reported that the fish switched on as I could keep my float still.