TUNNEL BARN FARM - MARCH 8TH - OPEN MATCH

TBF on a Monday.....cars were stacking up nicely as there was quite a few anglers fishing today

TBF - Top weights from the last 9 years - roll of honour !!

Always good banter and grub in the breakfast room at TBF

View of the LH arm of House pool

To the right of House pool ..........clear of ice but other pools were well iced-up

My peg 27 for the day .....but first ....some ice -breaking !!

Ice-breaking complete curtiousy of the angler on my far right who brought extra ice-breakers

Start of the match - 4 anglers to my left - note the lads at the end were ice-free but it was a cold wind hitting them first up there

The other arms of the pool were also ice - broken

2 Anglers to my right .....the ice was quite hard this end and took along time to melt away

My set up on peg27......hopefully i will do better than last Saturday

At about half way thro the match the angler to my left connected with an 'ANIMAL' which he played for a few minutes

At this point he had the fish mastered and was taking a joint away when his joint got stuck and the fish went on another run and his elastic broke !!!   doh !!

The weighing car came by.....the angler to my left had 24 ish pound , 10 lb more than me !!

He also had more bad luck in the match when his top 2 came off with a fish still on that kept swimming in and out of my peg.We both tried using our pole to try and hook the top but with no luck. After the match he tried to retreive the joint.

Well !!.....what did i learn from today ?......i thought it would be a maggot day at 7-8 metres , it was but i had 4-12 of silvers (skimmers,chub,roach,rudd,perch)....that was a mistake to keep catching them. Should have gone for sitting out for bigger stuff. The angler to my left fished 16m once the ice went ....he caught proper fish in 2.5 ft of water where the sun was warming it up . As soon as i went in at 16 m i had 9 carp for 9-11. Also i think corn or bread punched could score better and dont feed maggot on far side as it attracted too many silver fish bites !? ....maybe !?

The angler on the far right caught best in the margins at 13 metres , he had 10 proper fish and some further out in front of him for over 30lb i believe.

OKAY !......next match is Wednesday ,then Thursday then Saturday.....lets see if i can get my head around this.....it will be hard as all the lads are local cracks !

Last time i fished in the U.K. was August and you cannot believe how rusty you can get , but after 2 matches i have seen enough now to suggest given the peg , i can do something next time. But so far its been really good fun to listen to the English humour ....its outstanding !! Got to fish alot more before i possibily return to Sweden at the end of the month.