Todber Christmas match,Park lake, 21/12/13

This weekend I was off to Todber for my annual pilgrimage for the Todber Christmas match, at the draw it was a who's who of match fishing in the south west with the likes of Nick Chedzoy, Mark Poppleton, Ken Rayner, Chris Perry, Mark Harper and finally Des Shipp. Since it was another Christmas match, I was in it for the fun so I waited until close to the end on the draw and managed to pull out peg 9.  I do not know the venue that well but was not too impressed as I thought that 5, 6, 7,or 37 would have been better and the weather was pants so the top corner where the guys could fish across with the pole easily looked better.

However I was there to give it a bash so I decided on a three point plan to try and overcome the fresh breeze from right to left, I set up an 8ft Commercial King F1 Wand to fish a scoop feeder across, then a 2+2 line straight in front where I would fish pellet and a margin riog at the base of the marginal shelf down to my left.
There was bags of time before the all in and I was soon ready to go, bait list was 2mm and 4mm pellet mixed, a few expanders and a few red and white maggot, the al in was called and I potted in a small ball of pellet in front and then around 100 maggots down to my left. I then cast the feeder across and set a stopwatch onto 5 minutes, it counted down to about 3 minutes and the tip ripped round with carp number 1 on, and this was followed by 6 more of his friends in the first hour and a quarter before bites dried up.  I seemed to be about the only person catching on the method, bar Mark Harper on peg 5 who was admitting to 4, and on chatting to the guy in the next peg i can only assume that it was due to the fact that I was feeding pellet around the feeder and not alot of them, everyone else seemed to be sending out quite big lumps of groundbait that I could see. Whatever it was a change from a 6mm hard pellet to double dead red saw another carp and 2 F1's in the next 15 minutes before another quite spell.
It was at this point I decided to rest the far side and try the 2+2 line with pellet, I had been using my big cup to keep it topped up and as I lowered a 4mm pellet under the 10X11 MW F1 slim the float dipped and a small roach came straight to hand, unperturbed I dropped in again and this time the float dinked and a fair bit of pink reflex elastic came out the tip of the pole as a small carp did its best to get rid of the hook.  It failed and my day was set from then, it became a  case of trying my pole lines for a few minutes and if the float did not go under re feed and then sit on the tip for a little while.
I ended up with around 15 carp, a handful of decent roach and a skimmer at the end of the 5 hrs and I was unsure where that would put me, I had been watching Mark Harper catching a few lumps on corn throughout the day and I was sure that the far side would have seen some better weights. The scales did Mark before me and he managed 46lb, I had 2 weighs for 48lb and that was good enough for second on the board as when they reached Des Shipp it turned out that he had managed a few fish from his short pole line over the last couple of hours I believe and that was enough for 53lb.

We all went back to the shop for the prize giving and it turned out that Des, Mark and I had the top 3 spots on the day, It had been a close match with only 2 fish separating the top 3 so I was glad to be up there in such esteemed company.
Many thanks to John and the guys at Todber for running it again and to all the other anglers who braved some atrocious conditions on the day, I will see you all there again next year.