Thursday 27/10/2011 - Bathampton AA Over 55's And Disabled - Withy Pool

Don’t you hate it when the weather man gets it spot on, especially when rain all day is promised – and it did. However, we were all cheered up when Ray Bazeley passed round the donuts to celebrate his 65 birthday. After a rendition of happy birthday from his fellow “brothers” it was in to the draw box and out comes peg 60.

Peg 60 has some Skimmer form so that would be my quarry for the day. Theses pegs are very shallow close in and full of big stones so it is a question of fishing the pole as far as possible - or it’s the feeder. As I didn’t have a feeder rod it would be fishing the pole at 11.5 metres then. Actually it was a bit further than this as I set the box up in front of the platform because the water levels at right down (the rain will have some benefits). I set up the usual 4x16 Jolly for the Skimmers and a paste rig just in case the Carp turn up. I started by feeding a full 125 ml pot of a combination of caster, dead maggot and wetted micro. I started on the Jolly with 6 mm expander and nothing, umm. So I switched to triple maggot and after the first hour I had one Ronnie, one Perch and one small Skimmers not a promising start. Looking around everyone seemed to be struggling, so I stuck it out on the maggot catching what I could, mainly Perch and Ronnie’s. Then out of the blue I had two Carp one 18lb and the other 7lb 6oz. With an hour to go I tried a worm tail on the hook and hooked another Carp which I lost at the net, probably because of the large stones in front of me. I then had a run of three biggish Skimmers before I switched to the Paste for the last twenty minutes, which resulted in a lost foul hooked Carp. My two Carp weighed in at 25lb 6oz adding my 9lb of Silvers I had a total of 34lb 6oz which surprisingly put me third overall. I think I should have brought some GB for the Skimmers today – perhaps next time.

The match was won by Mike Key (pictured right) from peg 44 with 50lb 7oz. Mike caught on traditional waggler at full depth with maggot and worm on the hook fished over catapulted hard 4’s.

The Silvers was won by Alan Jones (pictured right with his catch of decent Skimmers) with 18lb 10oz from peg 61. Alan caught on the pole at 11.5 metres fishing worm over GB laced with chopped worm and caster.

Full Result:

1.      Mike Keys 50-07-0 peg 44

2.      Bob Price 44-03-0 peg 49

3.      Mike Nicholls 34-06-0 peg 60

4.      Chris Rolfe 31-10-0 peg 43

5.      Terry Church 22-07-0 peg 68

6.      Martin Alexander 22-04-0 peg 66

Top Silvers:

1.      Alan Jones 18-10-0 peg 61

2.      Harry Muir 16-03-0 peg 67

3.      Alan Shields 16-02-0 peg 69