01/09/24 - Shiplate - West Pool

Weight - 257lb 8oz (15lb silvers)

Catch - 52 Carp, 14 Skimmers, 1 Tench

Weather - Cloudy and muggy. Rain later

Match - Open (9 fished) - 4th overall, 2nd on lake

After seeing there was an open being run at Shiplate over the canals I decided to jump on as I enjoy my visits. Sadly, there were only 9 of us and a decision was made to split us over both canals, rather than putting us all on the 1 lake, mostly because Steve Howell didn’t want to be surrounded by too many people. At least it would mean lots of space and hopefully bites.

I drew p2 on West Pool, which is a peg I have always fancied drawing. There was a reed bed to the left where I decided to fish GLM paste, although my main attack would be 8mm meat covered in A-krill cloud.

On the all-in I had thought about starting across on the far bank with meat, however there were a couple of pleasure anglers on the main lake who were doing a lot of walking between their pegs as they were setting up. Therefore, I decided to start by the left-hand reed bed whilst the pleasure anglers settled down and started fishing.

After an hour I probably had 50lb of carp, plus 10lb of skimmers and a single tench, and a much better start than I expected. I found feeding 6mm p-nut pellet was better than micros, probably because the swim was nearly 3ft deep.

A switch to fishing across on meat, which proved to be troublesome. On 3 occasions I managed to snag on underwater roots, which required me going around and pulling them out. Once the swim was cleared, I caught, but I didn’t feel it was quick enough. I also lost a complete rig, when the elastic snapped on the puller, which was annoying as I only checked the elastic last week, but obviously not closely enough.

A quick try down the right-hand margin in 18in of water, fishing meat over GLM groundbait and bubblegum micros resulted in a good run of fish that were a better stamp than those I was catching across. In fact, I never went back to the far bank again.

After 3hrs (6hr match) I probably had just over 100lb. Back down the left-hand paste swim, I had a really good spell for 30mins before I started foul hooking.

The remainder of the match was a case of alternating between the 2 margins swims, where feeding 6s down the left was still best and toss potting groundbait/micros, plus a couple of cubes of meat was best down the right.

I had the occasional look over a 2+2 swim fed with meat, where I caught a couple of carp, but the 2 margins swims were definitely best.

I was pleased to weigh 257lb and a PB for the venue, where I ran venue expect Kirt close, missing out on the lake win by 20lb and was left ruing my bad 2hr hours, but still a great days fishing. As it happened Hawthorns fished even better!

1.    309-  7 – Gary Flinders – p3 (Hawthorns)

2.    298-  8 – Dave Cockayne – p5 (H)

3.    279-12 – Kirt Pinkett – p6 (West Pool)

4.    257-  8 – Ken Rayner – p2 (W)

Silvers

1.    21-  8 – Ron Stark – p9(W)

2.    15-  0 – Ken Rayner – p3 (W)

3.    13-10 – Golly – p11 (W)