All the Gear, No Idea: 21 May 2015, Trewaters (White Acres)

So in the blink of an eye it's soon onto the final day of the 2015 Garbolino Spring Classic festival at White Acres, the top lake at Trewaters being my home for the day.

All the usual pre-match excitement!!!

Today's dip into the bag of dreams provided peg 33 - a swim facing one of the points of the central island, effectively in the corner of the lake formed by the causeway (between the top and bottom lakes) and far banks of the pond.

Looking beyond the point of the island

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

This peg does provide a long margin to the right - however (rightly or wrongly) I initially chose to ignore it today as a close inspection revealed fairly clear water and lots of Canadian pond weed/bull rushes so I decided to focus on the pellet feeder to the island, especially as peg 34 won the lake yesterday with seventy plus pounds on that tactic.

All the gear ...

As a result setting-up didn't take long as I just rigged-up one tip rod with the usual 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, 30g small Preston pellet feeder, 0.22 bottom and a size 16 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band.

A rare sight!

The match started slowly with just one small carp, one F1 and 2 four ounce blades for about 4 pounds after the hour mark. With nothing to lose I stepped-down my hooklength slightly to 0.19 (not something I like doing on any carp venue) - this did see 2 F1s hooked, but both fell-off on the retrieve so I decided to swap to a 24g Guru X-Safe pellet feeder (the elasticated version that is now allowed at White Acres) and put an F1 in the bag first chuck!

The long margin to the right

This however was a false dawn and a couple of chucks on the feeder along the margin past the rushes led to a couple of pulls but only two more lost F1s due to the weed.

Looking down the lake to the left

Luckily things did pick-up in the second half of the match with a total of 10 carp of various sizes falling to the pellet feeder to the island. As a result I managed to put 36-8-0 on the scales - beaten fairly and squarely by peg 34's 50 odd pounds, but only just behind peg 35's 41lb for third in section, somehow giving me a £20 pick-up for a double default section win!

The first pick-up of the week!

Today's result saw me finish the festival with a total of 13 points and 106-8-0 in weight - a very disappointing 40th out of 72 and a world away from last year's podium finish. However congratulations must go to this year's top three who all finished on 23 points and had to be divided by total weight - Harry Billing coming-out top again followed by Reece Hearn and good friend Danny Edwards.