Bank holiday Monday 30th August 2010.

The battle between The Minx and Simon Mound.

On arriving at the lake today i was greeted by a near full lake of anglers already into their second hours fishing in todays Bank holiday Mondays open. I was not fishing today having just arrived back from holiday in Spain the evening before so i was pretty tired but not that tired to stop giving the regulars their normal helping of banter. As a prank directed at me their were a few anglers sporting the new in head gear created by me of the bandana cap which was being modelled by a few anglers today { thanks John , Paul and Niel }.

Crew members Paul and Neil.

Around the lake the usual suspect were catching fish with Chris Lovelock on peg 16 catching regular on a long line out fished on the deck, Hugh Crawford was on 8 , John Bennett on end peg 18 and Trevor Stanley on form peg 6. Elsewhere the other anglers were struggling to catch fish with Pat Pritchard on 23 having lots of fish up in the water but was struggling to get them in any numbers, Geoff Edwards on peg 26 was giving me a great demonstration of brilliant bites on paste but no fish in return.

On peg 30 my web partner Simon was claiming to a few fish on all methods so was quite happy also because his girlfriend Gemma { aka Mrs Mound } had not caught anything as there was no usual scream to be heard when she caught her first carp so there was no minxing to be had for him, and Paul Jay was doing his usual catch one fish lose the next three so at least he was keeping busy.

After about another hour i left Geoff to see a few guys around the lake and take a few photo’s and ended up at Gemma’s peg which was peg 4 and now she had caught two small roach but was struggling to catch any carp, a bit of advice on coming a little bit shorter in at about 5 metres seemed to sort this out as on her first put in had a carp of 13lb then lost one and then started to get more bites. I left Gemma having caught 5 carp and went around to watch Geoff for the last hour and passed Simon on the way around who was now sweating as he knew Gemma was catching him up and the chance of a minxing was deffinitley on so i have never seen Simon concentrate so much to add to his catch.

On arriving at Geoff peg he was now bagging as was Chris on 16 ,Paul on 10 Pat on 23 and John on 18 so it was going to be a good finish to the match as everyone seemed to into fish as the match reached the last few minutes, and as time was called it was difficult to workout who had actually won as Trevor on peg 6 had also had a good days fishing.

In first place today was eventually Geoff Edwards who after missing all those bites had managed to get the fish lined up by fishing the bush to his right and by using paste managed to get the bigger carp to 19lb to feed and after 5 hours caught 208-14 for another win { well done Geoff }.

In the battle for second place was three anglers Neil on 32 ,Trevor on 6, Pat on 23 and in the end only one fish seperated the three of them and after the weigh-in Trevor on 6 got the decision with 188-08 with Neil second having 185-00 and in fourth was Pat with 179-06.

As for the battle between Simon and Gemma this was also close with Gemma eventually having 6 carp and two roach for 61-06 and Simon then having to sweat for thirty minutes whilst everyone else got weighed in and when the scales arrived after two weigh-ins weighed 75-08 and this meant more to him than winning the match as he went off to do his victory dance { who said there is no love in fishing }.

Results.