Two matches grabbed my attention over the Bank Holiday weekend, both fished on the front pond at Carpvale.

On Sunday, local club Black Horse enjoyed a decent contest with Chris Vipas winning from peg 66. He fished cat meat on the pole and netted small carp for his bag of 35lb 10oz.

Geoff Hardy was second with a 31lb 9oz net of feeder corn and worm tempted carp from peg 61. Martin Hobson 23lb 4oz and Al Martindale 21lb 8oz were the other front-runners.

The following day a club from Harrogate tackled the same pegs on the same lake.

Traditional wisdom has it that they should have fared less well than the Black Horse boys who had plundered the stocks the day before.

Not so, however. The top five in the Monday contest all had weights bigger than Sunday's winner.

Why should this be? Surely the anglers were not that much better. I know a number of the Black Horse club and they are more than capable anglers.

I believe the answer is in the time of day that the respective contests were fished. Black Horse fished conventional 10am until 3pm. The club from Harrogate chose to fish from 2pm until 7pm.

The results speak for themselves.

Carp in particular are notorious evening feeders and often abandon all caution as dusk approaches where they will patrol the margins hoovering up bait discarded by anglers heading off home for tea.

Even during the depths of summer with soaring temperatures and an armada of boat traffic most matches on the local rivers are fished the couple of hours either side of mid-day.

Perhaps it is time for a rethink of match hours. Our sport is hard enough at the best of times without putting self-imposed barriers in the way. Aside from the obvious angling benefits I am sure many anglers would benefit from the lie-in.

A couple of other matches were fished on Bank Holiday Monday in the local area.

The newly opened Langwith Lakes at Heslington continues to produce some good early form.

Their match drew a healthy field of 59 and was won by young Danny Scott of Leeds with 41lb. Drawn on Bethany's Lake, he had carp and tench on pole and maggot fished at 14 metres to the island.

Ray Bedford was close behind with 40lb 8oz ahead of Frank Atkinson with 36lb 8oz, Trevor Scott on 33lb 7oz and Geoff Monday with 27lb 14oz.

At Carpvale, John Haw continued his great form taking victory from peg 9 on Cyprio Lake.

Offering pellet and corn into open water, he had around 20 carp for his 52lb 12oz.

Steve Sharples took second spot from peg 17 on the same lake with a level 51lb. He alternated pole and cat meat and feeder and corn for a mixed net of carp and tench.

Other leading weights were taken by: Andy Gallant 43-8-0; Graham Broadley 25-12-0; John Fletcher 22-12-0.

Updated: 10:46 Friday, April 16, 2004