Tunnel Barn Open 18/4/10

Hi folks, it's back to tunnel barn for this sunday's open and with 35-40 booked in it was going to be on two lake's new & top pool's. At the draw i pulled out new 35 a peg i have not fished before but fancied it for a few fish and the bonus was that the island is only 11m away. Stav had drew on the bottom end of top pool ( sorry the peg number escapes me ) with open water and no island to fish to.
When i started to set up i noticed that i had Paul Bick for company on peg 33 and Stu Pulsar on peg 37 i thought it was going to be a hard day with 2 local hero's either side of me that fish the venue regularly. I set up following rigs:
rig 1, 0.30gr maver jurassic dibber for up the island or shallow down the track 0.14 line 16 pr27 lassoed 6mm pellet.
rig 2, 3m line 4 x 12 j-8 range float 0.14 line to 16 tossicro hook set 3ft deep with just a bulk of stotz 10" inches form the hook.
rig 3, margin rig 4 x 12 preston dura 10 float wtih the same line and hook as above that would do for both left and right hand margins as they were the same depth.
Bait for the day was simple 1 bag each of tbf micro & 4mm feed pellets 2 tins of corn and some 4 & 6mm expanders for the hooK.
On the whistle i potted in some micro's & a few 4mm's on my right hand margin at around 6m an just threw a few 4mm's on my left hand margin while i put a pot full of micros in on my 3m line. I shipped out to the island at 11m with a lassoed 6mm on my shallow rig with just s few micro's in the kinder pot the rig was just touching bottom in around a 1ft of water. After around 3 put-ins i hooked my first fish which came off shipping back, next put in the same result fish on/ then off. After it happened the third time there was obviously something wrong but what? the hook was ok the depth ok? I decided to change the rig as i thought that the 6mm hair-rigged was to big for the fish and they were not taking it right, and i had a lot of missed bites with the fish playing ping-pong with my bait. I changed the rig to a 4 x10 preston durra 1 float and 16 tossciro with a 4mm expander and soon after i had my first f1, of the day by this time the first half hour had gone and paul had 4-5 fish and stu had got 9 SHIT i was miles of the pace already. My island swim was frustrating me as i new there were fish there but i would have one or two bites max before it went dead, there was a bit of a dead tree to my right and when i couldn't get a bite i could see the fish under the tree where they were safe and i couldn't get at them. After i had tried to catch of my short and margin lines without success i decided to try my shallow rig by the tree as i could fish moving under the twigs and rubbish that had collected by the tree. After another 15 mins fruitless i was left needing snookers, Stav come and sat on the grass behind me and said he was struggling as well only being able to catch odd skimmers. I went over to the island on the deck while he was there and had 2 fish in 2 puts then nothing for 5 mins, the only thing i could think of was that after a fish or 2 or a missed bite the fish would back off in the bright sunny conditions to the sanctuary of the tree. Great i thought a least i know what to do now have a fish off the island got elsewhere for 5 mins then pick another off the island? the only problem with plan was that i couldn't get a bite off any other line but the island. Stu pulsar to my left was having a fish a bung off his island swim and odd fish from his margin's fishing worm, Paul to my right had odd fish off his island but quiet a few fish from his left hand margin passed the empty pallet up to a big set of reeds. The rest of the match followed suit all i could manage was a few fish from my left hand margin in the last hour, to say i had a battering off the next peg was an under statement. Paul had 67lb , Stu had 124lb and wait for it me 40lb stuck piggi in the middle i had had a slapping both sides so both my cheeks were red! oh hum. A quick walk over to Stav reveled that he had managed a few carp in the last hour to weigh in just short of 30lb. After talking to a few of the regulars later it soon became apparent that we were fishing the wrong bait as the top 5 had fished different baits but none of them on pellet! I thought that the 124lb Stu had would put him in a top spot? not so the place had gone off on one, Rob Avery had 173lb off peg 3 on top pool with bread 6in deep at 6m? Stu's weight was only good enough for 5th? On looking at stu's peg after match he had been fishing in a gap in-between 2 reed bed's on the island offering cover for the fish after he had caught one so he could go straight over and have another, also he had fished worm. It was food for thought as it was apparent that the fish were not liking pellet at the minute.