Catch - 16 Carp, 9 Skimmers, 2 Roach, 1 Perch
Weather - Warm & sunny
Match - Tony's Float Only - 10th out of 40, 2nd on lake
Today I was making up the numbers for Tony’s float only. I had wanted to fish the whole series, however I couldn’t attend all the dates, so made myself available as a stand in for the dates I could make. I have only fished Shiplate once before 2.5yrs ago on West Pool and didn’t know too much about the place other than what I read on a few blogs, but know its popular with the Clevedon based anglers. Arriving at the venue it became clear I wasn’t the only one fishing “blind”.
Peg 9 on West Pool, sounded familiar and when I arrived I realised it was the same peg I drew the last time I was here – what are the chances? With the payout per section, I was disappointed with my peg, because Paul Blake on the end peg 3 with the wind blowing into that end, Bob Gullick on p5 (the first peg were it narrows, Martin McMahon on p6 and Trigger on p8. So all had space, whilst I had none because I was the 2nd angler in a line 4, with Joe “tourettes” McMahon the other side of me on p10.
Fortunately the far bank was 15m away and Joe’s pole didn’t quite reach, so I hoped that would work to my advantage, but to be honest I thought I would be up against it. There was plenty of fish moving around so I was at least hopeful of catching a few.
Plumbing up revealed the far bank was shallow and the near margin was even shallow at 8in and I honestly couldn’t see me catching that close in. So rigs for the day
- border 4x10 > .14 > 16B911 – far bank
- MP paste > .19 > 12 carp feeder – far bank
- Ackoo Carrat 0.3g > .16 > 16 B911 – meat @ 5m
- SM Chimp 0.3g > .12 > 16 silverfish pellet – expander at 12m
After feeding meat/hemp at 5m and micros/4s with a little groundbait at 12m, I started on the paste rig fishing tight across simply toss potting a few 6s with paste, hoping to pick up a few early fish using a big target bait and slowly build up the swim. After 30mins I had a few liners, but no fish, but no one had caught except for Bob, so decided to stick with it.
A quick look with maggot only produced a small roach, so switched back to the paste rig which resulted in a 2lb skimmer, but still no carp. A switch to pellet only produced a few nibbles from small silvers, which meant after 90mins I didn’t have a lot in the net, which went for most of us on the lake. Bob was still catching, Trigger had managed to snare a couple of fish from his margin and Steve Tucker on p12 had caught.
Today was a lot warmer and brighter than expected and I think the fish were more interested in sunning themselves than feeding. I had kept my pellet & meat lines topped up every 15mins. Since I couldn’t catch a carp I switched the 12m pellet swim and soon caught a few small skimmers and eventually a small carp.
3hrs in and I had about 6lb in the net. Whilst fishing the 12m line I kept pinging 6s to the far bank, which had the undesired effect of attracting the attention of the ducks and moorhens. The ducks in particular where a nightmare, especially for Trigger as they cleaned out his margin everytime he fed it.
Fishing across with 6mm meat on the hook and I soon landed a few fish, but the moorhens had flatten some the sedges back into the water, making presentation difficult. There was nothing for it, but to go round and re-clear the swim. I ended up doing Triggers and Bobs as well!
The meat line produced a carp first drop in and I thought great I’ll catch a few now, but the next fish was roach and I started to get little knocks from silvers. I returned to the swim later but no carp.
As for the far line I had kept pinging pellet in and caught a couple of carp, but had a 20mins when I couldn’t catch, so decided to toss pot 6s instead which worked much better and the last 90mins was the best spell of the match, where I overtook Trigger and nearly caught up with Bob.
Overall really pleased with how the match went, particularly from my peg. The old cliché of a match of 2 halves was very much the case today.
1st 101- 9 – Tom Mangnall – p1 main lake
2nd 100- 5 – Glenn Bailey – p2 main lake
3rd 87- 9 – Sean Townsend – p14 main lake
4th 74- 8 – Eddie Wynn – p15 main lake
5th 71- 7 – Tim Ford – p6 hawthorn
6th 63-10 – Gordon Cannings – p15 hawthorn
Silvers
1st 10-14 – Rich Lacey – p3 main lake
2nd 8- 4 – Dave Haines – p12 hawthorn
3rd 7- 4 – Gary O’Shea – p13 main lake
4th 6- 6 – Neil Mercer – p5 main lake
5th 6- 0 – Eddie Wynn – p15 main lake
6th 5-14 – Mike Nichols – p14b main lake
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