Cob House Open Wednesday 1/8/12

Today Stav and I had decided to fish the open at Cob House which was booked on Laurel pool for day 3 of our fishing week I was looking forward to today as I have only fished this pool once before a few weeks ago on a Cradley club match winning it with 134lb, after another cracking breakfast in the onsite Mayfly Cafe we headed for the tackle shop to do the draw there were 14 booked in for the open and I drew out peg 22 which is one out of the corner and Stav drew peg 12. When I got to my peg the wind was blowing quite strong into the corner to my left where there is a nice overflow pipe feature and with a good chop on the water I fancied it for catching a few fish, Stav's peg is on the bank with his back to Wyatts pool and he had the wind blowing off his back but to be honest the fish are all around on this pool and the winner can come from any peg there are no out and out flyers. I was going to attack the peg in the same way as I did in the club match as I always say " if it ain't broke don't fix it " so I had brought plenty of dead maggots and pellets for bait, I set up 4 rigs to cover the peg, on the deck at 4m, down the left hand edge at 4m and 2 shallow rigs 1 for pellet with a bait band and the other for maggots.
At the start of the match I fed the margin line with 2 big pots of dead maggots while I kicked off on the 4m line with a 6mm expander on the hook feeding a few 4mm feed pellets over the top but after the first 10mins went by without I was getting worried as you can normally catch straight away here, 5mins later I was on the shallow pellet rig I was shocked at the lack of bites on the 4m line as I could see fish already swirling over my maggots down the edge but I wanted to leave them as long as possible before going for them. I went out to 11m and started feeding a few pellets while spinning the rig to make a noise it didn't take long before the elastic shot out of the pole and Carp no1 was soon in the net, it was very slow going as by the end of the first hour I had only got 4 Carp for my efforts I had started to feed maggots at 6m  for a shallow line but my margin line was alive with fish and I couldn't wait any longer. I went down the edge and started to hook fish straight away with some of them good fish in the 3-4lb bracket as most of the fish are 1-2lb as I began to put a few fish in the net I made a big mistake, as I started to loose feed maggots down the edge instead of potting then in the wind was blowing some of the bait into the grass and into the very shallow water the Carp were in only inches of water and becoming very difficult to hook in the mouth I began to foul-hook fish! Try as I might I couldn't get the fish in the mouth there were too many fish down there every other fish I was loosing so I stopped feeding by hand and went back to feeding with the cupping kit, while I was fishing down the edge I had been feeding the shallow 6m maggot line all the time and when the sun came out from the clouds I could see fish taking the maggots with my sunglasses on most of them were the better stamp of fish. I began fishing the shallow line with good success catching some good fish and by switching between the two lines managed to keep the fish coming until the end of the match, as I packed away I felt that I had done well on the pool but felt that the first hour and half would cost me as you cannot afford to go that long without catching. I walked around to Stav's peg as the scales came around and I asked him how many fish he had got "92" he replied I told he it looked like he had pulled a £1 back as my fish counter only read 68 he said I had bagged all day but I told him that I had lost too many foul-hookers, when the scales got to Stav there were a couple of weights over 100lb with the best 114lb Stav's fish went 143lb to put him in the lead I did notice that a lot of his fish were on the small side most of which he had caught shallow on the pellet slapping and spinning the rig, the guy next to Stav had 120lb and the guy on corner peg had 188lb which looked like being the winner today all of which he said he had caught down the edge all day. The next couple of guy's failed to break the ton before it was my turn my fish went 157lb which was good enough for 2nd on the day and Stav 3rd putting me 3-0 up in our week of fishing ( it's becoming a one horse race this one! Lol ), I had lost too many fish from the margin which would have put me over 200lb and getting off to a slow start didn't help but I was happy to have come 2nd today getting another one over on my mate but I also learnt a lesson. Feeding maggots down here has won me some money this year but loose feeding them down the edge is a no no as it is taking the fish into too shallow a water to catch them even putting the shallow rig on 6 inches deep failed, I think that I might start trying to feed the maggots in balls of groundbait too try and get the Carps head down? I will have to experiment with this, feeding maggots shallow has now twice caught me bigger fish than feeding pellets maybe they have been caught a few times on pellet and have become wary of it or is it just a different bait?