At the same 35 acre reservoir I spoke of in my previous blog this was never going to be easy. Usually seeing no more than ten or twelve anglers at any one time, the sudden line pressure and mass of activity made what is already a hard water become  an extremely challenging water for the full 48hr match. 

Tactics

Been last out of the draw and ending up with a swim at the end of the lake that hadn't produced a fish for quite some time I decided on the stealthy approach. So while there were spombs and spods crashing in from both sides in front of me I decided to lightly lead around to find two spots, put stiff hinge rigs followed by twenty 14 mm split boilies pre soaked in Haiths 5 spices liquid around them with the throwing stick. Then sit on my hands for the first 12 hours with the hope the other anglers would push the carp my way and onto my baited areas. The 12 hours passed without so much as a bleep for me as well as everyone else bar two, These both landing 2 mid to upper doubles each. So to phase two, I clipped up my spod rod to match both my spots and put 6 midi spoms of Haiths 5 spices super soft pellets mixed with a few more of the boilies soaked in the matching 5 spice liquid over each spot, this followed by the two rigs once refreshed. It was time to sit on my hands again, This is why above all having confidence in your bait, rigs and tactics are paramount. More Often than not you see other carp anglers start to panic, Changing rigs and bait every half hour when things go quiet and even more so when they see other anglers landing fish. So having confidence in my bait and rigs I had no problem leaving things as they were for the remainder of the match. The rest of that day and the final night passed with no fish to show, The only positive was I hadn't heard of anyone else catching either. That was until just before first light while making a brew my right rod tore off and after a great fight I landed this cracking common with little more than 4 hours to go. 
  
With a total of only 7 fish on the bank over the full match, Having the confidence in everything I do rewarded me with first place for the biggest fish and position for overall weight. As they say THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING ! ..... It's Easy!