On the whistle I started to bang in feed and had a few fish shallow early on but could not keep them in one spot so decided to drop down onto the bottom and picked up carp after carp but they were all small biggest being barely 2lb. Not much else was being caught but I could see Josh netting the odd fish and AlanG to my right was getting the odd fish shallow.

The second hour was a bit slower and a few fish were caught but not as hectic as the first hour but they were still small. Trying a few other spots around the peg resulted in very little and the fish seemed to be setting right by the end of my keepnets. As the sun started to come out the bites slowed right down. On the far side of the lake Josh had given up on the paste and had switches to dog biscuits taking advantage of a helpful wind and was picking up some good lumpy fish as was Brian. Stan on the car park bank was using expanders and picking up plenty of small carp with the odd bigger fish. Also on the car park bank, two to Stan's right, was veteran Charlie Palmer. He was catching steady on a variety of baits and looked to be getter a better stamp of fish.

It was clear it was fishing OK but it was not the normal race and the fish were a bit cagey at half time. Around this time Richard Wheatland, drawn to my left, decided a change of tactics was needed and decided to attack his swim with corn feeding very heavily and was quickly into fish after fish. Josh had now ramped up a gear, into fish after fish and they were proper lumps on mixers. Brian was also getting amongst the lumps including two with fish around 10lb on floating bread. Still catching well were Stan and Charlie as was Steve Burfoot on the Horseshoe. Pete Fell on the Ash lake causeway had picked up some good carp too. So whilst it was not flying there were pockets of people catching well even if the water was clearer and lower than normal.

The last hour was a struggle for me with the fish refusing to come in close and bites now were very finicky. Josh had his best run in the last hour reporting over 100lb in the net in the last hour ! Richard was caching continually now and I thought he might be in the running. It took me some time to work out the fish were responding to the sound of the pellets going in and I’d over wetted my pellets so they were not making the right noise and a change to fresh hard pellet brought the fish back but it was probably too little too late.

At the weigh in Brian put a good starting weight just shy of 150lb on the scales, Josh “ Bag up” Blavins put his surface fishing skills to take full advantage of his draw to record a superb 273lb with his mixer master class. Josh found the long line prevented the fish from spooking and surely this weight would be top. There were plenty of 50-60lb nets. Steve Burfoot was next to break 100lb with around 109lb from the far bank. I was unsure what I had as my fish were tiny with very few over 2lb and quite a few around 8oz. I just cracked 100lb with 102lb and Richard Wheatland had recorded a good 92lb 12oz and fished a very tidy match on corn. Pete Fell had just pipped him a couple of pegs up with a 94lb 13oz bag.. Next weight to top the Ton was Charlie Palmer with another good result with a tidy 137lb 14oz. Stan’s net looked very close to Brian’s 149lb 8oz but ultimately he fell just one or two fish short with 141lb 11oz for third, pushing Charlie back to 4th, leaving Brian in second and Josh's weight nearly as much as 2nd & 3rd put together. It also means that Josh has weighed-in over 1000lb of carp in his last three VAC matches - clearly a 'record' by a long way and perhaps one never likely to be beaten.!

Overall plenty of fish were caught to a wide variety of baits and tactics so whilst the sharp dip in temps had slowed things down everyone found plenty of fish in front of them just not all in a feeding mood so it was nice to have to work things out rather than an out and out fish race.