Monday, 20 February 2023

18/02/23 - Shearwater

Weight - 23lb
Catch - 8 Bream
Weather - Drizzle and light rain on & off all day. Strong westerly
Match - Angling for Heros charity match (33 fished) - 8th overall, 2nd in section

A couple of hours after agreeing to stand in for Chris Ware at Shearwater this coming Wednesday I became aware of an Angling for Heros charity match on Saturday so jumped on.

I love fishing Shearwater and like many was disappointed to see it closed during Covid. During this time there have been reports of fish being poached and loads of cormorants, so it would be interesting to see how it fished.

So far, this winter has been difficult as the fish appear to be tightly shoaled not helped by the recent freezing conditions. Today was a lot milder and there was a stiff westerly wind blowing into the dam wall, which hopefully meant the fish had spread out.

With 33 anglers the pegging was a little tight in areas, however I was happy to draw (p13) on the point opposite the dam wall.

On the all-in 7 feeders full of groundbait, micros, 4s and corn was deposited at 57m. Whilst that settled, I cast to 70m towards the buoys (75m) hoping for an early pull, which didn’t happen. After 30mins I went over the 55m line fishing an 8mm wafter and after a couple of funny bites switched to a 6mm yellow wafter and managed 3 bream over the next hour.

The following hour only produced 1 bream, which prompted a re-feed with a further 4 feeders full of bait.

From those I could see, Ian White to my right had caught a few bream and a 16lb carp, but Roland Lucas and Stu Burridge to my left were both blanking, and I couldn’t see much being caught on the dam wall.

I managed to a catch a couple more bream at 75m next to the buoys and only 1 over the re-feed. I had also fed a short line but never had a touch here.

My section ran from Ian who won the section round to my left and most of the dam wall, were I think only 1 or 2 anglers weighed, so an area to avoid on Wednesday.

The fish were obviously in the shallower water to my right, which meant I was on the edge and pleased to finish 2nd in section and 1 out of the money – again!

Overall, it was nice to return as well as seeing more bream showing, which meant the cormorants hadn’t eaten them all!

1.   
59- 1 – Louis Morris – p7 (boathouse)
2.    54-10 – John Moody – p30 (road bank)
3.    53- 8 – Matt Skyme – p8
4.    48-10 – Mark Leader – p35
5.    48- 0 – Ian White – p12

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