We had the day to appraise what we would do for the forthcoming evening and to tie more rigs, PVA socks, make phone calls, drink tea and eat dinner. Koos and Bernie, the Dutch pair from Indyline section, on the main Island next to the start of Pescalis section came round during the day to say hello and to re- inform us we were in 1st place and that they were in second place.

We had a dilemma as to whether to leave the position of all four rods as they were or to reposition the 2 inside rods. The 6 carp had fallen only to our extreme left and right hand rods, fished on snowmen and lightly baited spots, but 250 yrs apart. Not one carp was caught on the tiger nut rigs and heavier baited areas in between. So we had to decide whether we thought the carp would move onto these areas or to move both these rods further out and in a line similar to the 2 extreme rods........... we decided to move them......  now this was a risk as we were also conscious of putting too many lines in the same area , but we both went out separately during the day  and spent a couple of hours finding another two spots further out. We were both extremely happy with the two new areas. Tom found the edge of a weed bed on a really hard area again about 200 yrds out for his left rod in about 8ft depth and I found a particularly hard area of clay in the middle of  a few humps and bumps  in about 12ft for my right hand rod. We repositioned the atropa tubes (these were dropped about 5 yrds further out from the rigs) and by 7pm we had all four rods out in what we were absolutely confident were optimum areas. All the rods were now being fished with snowmen Active 8 bottom baits and pineapple popups (The Active 8 boilies were 20ml and had been soaked from the previous Wednesday in England in Maple cream dip. This had made them rock hard to escape the attentions of crayfish). For each drop we were now putting in about a kilo of broken up boilies and a long PVA sock (Triple bagged) of crushed boilies with the hooklength threaded through. As we dropped the rigs on the bottom from the boat we would pull the lead to straighten the hooklength before setting off back to the land.

By 5.30am on Wednesday morning we had landed another 8 carp: 12.2k; 13.2k; 12.4k; 12.1k; 14.4k; 13.1k; 19.4k; 19.9k;

What a night it was.... the wind had now got up to quite a force and it was becoming particularly hard to get the rods back out and place the baits but we had managed to do this through the night and had now landed all of our takes with the exception of the 1st fish on the Monday night lost in the tree stumps. The carp had been coming to all four rods now so the tactic of moving the middle rods had worked like a dream. Well, it was now daylight and we had thought the action would slow up..... not to be. Chris and Rob had informed us that the TV crews were on there way with assorted personnel and we had two 40lb+ Carp in the sacks for filming. By now we’d managed about another 1-2 hrs of sleep so.....  we were tired..... but still absolutely buzzing..... the adrenaline was keeping us going. Chris, the marshal was actually falling asleep propped up against the weigh bar (poor things...... the whole pescalis section had been catching well and these two had been weighing the fish almost single-handedly). So whilst we awaited the TV crew and to our surprise, we had a take at 10.30 am. The wind was very strong now so we had agreed that we would play the fish from the bank and would only go out in the boat if the carp hit weed or an obstacle. We managed to land the fish from the bank from 200 yrds out, and as soon as we had landed that carp we had another take and landed a further fish.  By the time the TV crew had arrived the wind had blown up to gale force gusts and it was around this time I lost the over wrap to my JRC Quad. I had unzipped the door one side and before I knew it the wind had blown the whole thing up and over, ripping all the pegs out of the ground. Well, Ross Honey turned up and before we had a chance to sort the fish out for filming one of the rods bent over double, the buzzer let out two bleeps (at range with mono and fully locked a single bleep and Rod bent over were the only indication of takes) and we were in ....... another fish landed from the bank and another 40lb+. We were able to take triple shots of the three 40s with Ross doing the honours with the third one. We had one more carp while the film crew were there and it was at this time we were told not to go back out in the boats as it was considered too dangerous.......  The whole lake had to abide by the boat ban and although we respected the official’s position we were gutted that at this prime time we had to stop placing the rods and could no longer take advantage of the feeding spell. By 1 pm on the Thursday these further 4 carp 14.9k; 15.2k; 19k; and 13.75k had seen us land 18 Carp to around 250k in total. Although we were now totally exhausted we were gagging to carry on catching..... Alas we had to wait until 7 pm for the boat ban to be lifted and reposition our rods for the Thursday evening, the penultimate night of the match. It was during the Thursday after the hullabaloo had died down and a million phone calls and temper tantrums had abated that Tom and I having found ourselves actually alone in the swim for a few hours managed to grab a couple more hours sleep. At 8pm on the Thursday night we landed our 19th Carp, an hour after putting the rods back out. We had 2 more takes that night but unfortunately were to lose our second carp , the lead core  sliced by razor muscles while I was attempting to land from the bank (this was the last fish we would lose ) these two further fish weighed in 13.95K; 16.1K;.  We were now looking to break through the 300K barrier.

When we awoke on the Friday morning, after managing a further four hours sleep I was actually, for the first time since the Tuesday morning able to talk properly and be understood, the baby gibberish I had been uttering had disappeared. My speech had also slowed down from around 2 hundred words a minute to a more legible pace and the world seemed a more peaceful and chilled place...... We were now in an almost unassailable position to be caught with 2nd place around 100-150kilos behind us.
Well, the Friday... Last day of the competition was with us and the final night of the match would soon be looming but we weren’t about to let up and we tied more rigs, sorted out more PVA socks and although we were running close to Lead shortage, food shortage, bait shortage, Gary Peet and Miles Gascoyne had paid us a visit during the day to replenish our dwindling stocks. So we were able and ready for the Last evening. We had sorted out all the rods, had our last meal on the Island and awaited the evening and breaking the 300 kilo barrier.

The first take came at 8pm , by 04.00 am we had landed another 6 carp : 18.2K; 2.4k; 10.75k; 14.55k; 6.4k; 11.35k;  We indeed broke through 300 kilos and finished with 347.5Kilo (764.5lb) ,  26 Carp at an average of 29.4lb . We managed to Land 10 from the bank and 16 from the boat in total, losing only 2 takes out of 28.

We got through about 40 12oz leads with the additional assorted bream and pest fish. 40-50 kilos of boilies, and bucket fulls of sweat, tears and adrenaline. We figured we managed a total of about 12 hrs sleep from the Tuesday morning but would have gladly fished for another week doing exactly the same if we could.

We would both like to thank especially Kev Knight from Mainline Baits and Martin Locke from Solar tackle for their continual and generous backing and also to Fox Tackle, Kryston, Ultima and Shimano for their help and backing in this event. Lastly but by no means least, thank you to Tim Paisley for again including Tom and I in the Carpworld Team to allow us the opportunity to compete at Madine......   As they say in France “Au Revoir, Carpe Diem”.

Rob and Tom