Thursday 02/02/2012 - Bathampton AA Silvers Championship - Bridge Pool - Round 3

With the temperature at -4 degrees, a freezing cold NW light wind and a bright sunny day promised I was hoping for a peg between 15 and 3. All these peg will have the sun in the face all match, plus the wind would be off the right shoulder. I couldn’t believe my luck when I pulled out peg 8. Out of all the pegs, it would have been my choice; it has plenty of Silvers form!

When the weather gets cold and dry, it always seems to bring out the Robins as it did today. I shared my bait for most of the day with the cheeky fellow pictured right.

My New Year’s resolution – “I will not go fishing and break ice” - lasted all of January up to today. I was told it was only Cat Ice!! I needed the breaker as it was in fact 10mm thick. Lucky enough I had Harry Muir on peg 5 on hand, who swung the lead for me, I think he could easily qualify for the Olympic Irish Shot-put. On next peg 7 I had that nice man Andy Shields - again (pictured lower right with Dave Gillard hand lining for mackerel – I thought the line thickness was a bit optimistic).

With the ice cut out to 6.2 metres in line with the sun (11 to 12 o clock) with the plan that I would only suffer the suns reflection for the first hour or so. I set up the one rig a 4x16 Jolly to be fished in seven foot of water. With the Orvis Bifocal Polaroid glasses on I started by feeding a walnut ball size of my Skimmer GB combined with six loose pinkies. With double Pinkie on the hook I was soon in to a 3oz Skimmer. I followed this with a few 2oz Ronnie’s before feeding a few more Pinkies with the same amount of micro. I kept a few small Skimmers and Ronnie’s coming but noticed that after feeding I was getting liners. So I was thinking I needed to feed another ball of GB but was apprehensive as no one was catching and I suspect they had fed GB. Instead, after feeding I would change the depth and adjust it down after every fish. After 2 ½ hours I decided to feed another ball of GB and luckily enough it didn’t kill the swim, however, the fish were still coming up to intercept the feed, following it down. I also switched from Pinkie to big dead maggot trying all the colours, but still the Lion's share falling to my favourite red. I think I wore out the top 2ft of my rig through moving the float up and down. That said I did manage to keep the fish coming, one a bung. I did have a “senior moment” when I landed a 4oz Skimmer and a slice of ice, putting the slice in the net and the Skimmer back in the Lake – duh. The upshot was I had a lovely day’s fishing whilst remaining relatively warm. I was surprised to keep the fish coming all match and to weigh in 17lb 4oz which was well good enough for first overall, thoroughly thrashing Mike Jones (pictured lower right with his runner up catch) off the next occupied peg.

My pairs partner put in a great performance also winning his sections, it looks like the Mike's are on the march.

The Carp was won by Bob “The Bread” Price with luckily one of the smaller of the species weighing 8lb 8oz. Bob caught all his fish on bread fished at 5 metres. As Bob was the only one to catch an “Accidental” he picked up all the pools money.

Full Result:

1.      Mike Nicholls 17-04-0 peg 7

2.      Mike Jones 8-12-0 peg 11

3.      Bob Price 7-04-0 peg 30

4.      John Smith 5-04-0 peg 14

5.      Dave Wride 5-02-0 peg 28

6.      Andy Shields 3-06-0 peg 8

Accidental Carp Pool:

1.      Bob Price 8-08-0 peg 30

2.      No one