I'm fishing the Fish to Win qualifier down at Colemans Cottage in Essex today

  
I had a good run down to Essex today so I was at the lake in plenty of time to have a full English in the cafe before the draw
The match is being run over 2 lakes Pathfield and Wood lake
I've fished Pathfied lake quite a few times but never fished on Wood lake so I am hoping to draw on Pathfield

So at the draw it was no surprise to me to come away with peg 20 on Wood lake
I got my gear loaded up and pushed it round to peg 20 which is right at the far end of the lake from the car park
When I arrived it looked ok with a small island/tuft out in front and 2 decent looking margins

As I collected my nets from the cage up by the carpark the owner told me that the best method was to fish the feeder across to the island at the start and down the edge later on

So that is basically my plan for today with the exception of I'm also going to plumb up a pole line out in front at 9m

A margin swim in my left hand margin at about 4m

And the same in the right hand margin

On the whistle I shipped a pot of pellets into all the swims then cast a small feeder filled with dampened pellets across to the island with a grain of corn on the hook

Straight away my tip was jumping about all over the place and then shot round
Straight away I could tell it was foul hooked as it kited off to my right at a great rate of knots
And that was the patten for the next hour with foul hooker after foul hooker I tried moving away form the island a bit I tried different baits on the hook I tried an empty feeder all to no avail all I could get were line bites and foul hooked fish and to make it worse I didn't get 1 of them in
I was starting to get quite a nice collection of scales from my foul hooked fish and it did cross my mind that if I got enough I might be able to make a fish jig saw with them
After about an hour I gave up on the feeder and shipped a 6mm catmeat soft hooker pellet out to the 9m line fired a few pellets out over the top the float bobbed a couple of times then buried and I was attached to my first correctly hooked fish of the day which was an 8oz Carp I had a run of about 6 fish all of a similar size then they disappeared
Looking around the part of the lake I could see with the exception of the guy across to my right on the point most people seemed to be struggling for bites

I re-fed my 9m swim and caught a couple of Tench straight off both around the 8oz mark then the bites disappeared again and that seemed to be the pattern that was forming I would get a couple of fish and then would have to wait ages for the next bite
I had the wind blowing off my back and it was getting up quite a bit now and I suspect the fish had followed the wind and were all down the other end of the lake as there was very little action up at this end
The guy to my left was now starting to catch a few fish down the edge so I decided to give my margin swim a shot
I had no joy on corn or meat but an 8mm banded pellet brought a instant response from a Carp of about 3lb encouraged by this I sat it out in the margin swim for the rest of the match and managed another 8 fish all around the 3lb mark
The guy to my left in the corner was catching a fish a chuck in the last couple of hours and had easily won the section but most of the others down this end of the lake were still struggling

Eventually the whistle went to end the match I thought I had around 35lb which would probably put me in last place but a few people had packed up and not bothered to weigh in so maybe I hadn't done as badly as I thought
When the scales arrived my fish went 37lb 04ozs

I packed my gear away and pushed it back round to the car

I ended up in 50th place overal the winner came from the other end of Wood lake and most of the other top weights were from Pathfield lake

Not a good days fishing but at least it didn't rain

1	Robbie Taylor	205lb	Preston Innovations Delcac
2	Jake Hopper	185lb 12oz	Colemans
3	Simon Colclough	178lb 4oz	Browning Wickford
4	Danny Grimsey	177lb 4oz	Maver Image
5	Gary Hopper	175lb	Colemans
6	Alex Reynolds	152lb 8oz	Browning Wickford
7	Pete Upperton	150lb 5oz	Middy
8	Rob Bishop	141lb 4oz	Map
9	Graham Dack	140lb 8oz	Middy
10	Lee Edwards	124lb 4oz	Bowlers
11	Damien Curtis	123lb	Browning CPS
12	Cliff Adams	119lb 8oz	Billercay AC
13	Steve Clark	114lb 8oz
14	Mark Glynn	110lb	Meat Bashers
15	Adrian Marshall	105lb 8oz
15	Russ Berryman	105lb 8oz	Garbolino - Apollo
17	Gary Bell	103lb 10oz
18	Dickie Carr	101lb 5oz	Drennan
19	Dean Lock	100lb 8oz	Garbolino - Apollo
20	Tony Lock	100lb 4oz	Garbolino - Apollo
21	Ross Bibby	99lb 12oz	Colemans
22	Bernie Fraser	93lb
23	Terry Edwards	92lb 12oz	Browning Wickford
24	Martin Amos	92lb 4oz
25	Gary Swan	92lb
26	Ivan Coleman	87lb
27	Jeff Davis	80lb
28	Sean Stephenson	78lb
29	Pete Steward	75lb 4oz	Browning Wickford
30	Jonnie Bell	75lb
31	John Coster	73lb	Bowlers
32	Colin Story	72lb
33	Frank Thomas	70lb 10oz	Browning Wickford
34	R Swan	68lb
35	Danny Coss	66lb
36	Jason Collins	62lb	Browning Wickford
37	Jason Nash	60lb 8oz
38	Barry Upperton	60lb 4oz	Meat Bashers
39	John Hunt	60lb 2oz	Brentwood Angling
40	Geoff Woods	55lb	OBT
41	Tom Webster	53lb 8oz
42	Steve Coppin	52lb 8oz
43	Mark Bransgrove	51lb 10oz	Lords Leisure
44	Micky Hood	50lb 8oz	Bowlers
45	Colin Forsdick	50lb
46	Ben Coss	49lb 4oz
47	John Bell	44lb	Browning CPS / FTW
48	Mick Cook	39lb
49	Paul Rounce	38lb
50	Clive Pritchard	37lb 4oz	Maggotdrowning.com
51	Chris Latimer	31lb	BarDag
	Malcolm Bond	DNW
	Billy Mckinley	DNW
	Wayne Candy	DNW	Browing Wickford
	David Ward	DNW
	Mark Sugden	DNW
	Sean Mahoney	DNW	Big Fish
	Paul Taylor	DNW
	Chris Nicholls	DNW	Garbolino - Apollo