Thursday 25/10/2012 - Bathampton AA - Over 55's and Disabled - Bridge Pool

Loaded up the car and started her up only to find an Engine fault light on. Although the car ran Ok I decided to give that friendly Auto Electrical Engineer – Mr Tim Clark a call, who agreed to come round at 10 o clock with his diagnostics kit. Another quick call to Bob Warren and we were soon on our way to the Coffin Dodgers via Asda for breakfast. Not a good start to the day I was hoping it wouldn’t get worse, but I was concerned when Bob said he was sporting a new hat – not the I am superstitious – ask Bob!

 

The Coffin Dodgers are still turning up in good numbers with 24 pegs in the bag. I was first of the able anglers to draw and pulled peg 9 on the disabled bank. I was happy with this as it’s a good Silvers peg – particularly for Skimmers.

 

I set up:

4x16 Jolly for the Skimmers

Ronnie rig

Margin paste rig

 

As the colour had dropped out a bit so I decided to start by feeding a small ball of GB laced with 2mm soft pellet at 7 metres. The intention was to fish both 4 and 6mm expander over it (the Worms staying in the bag). However, I started on the Ronnie rig with caster and started catching a good stamp of Ronnie which unfortunately only lasted 30 minutes before the swim died - I wonder why. So it was out on the 4mm expander where I was getting shy bites from tiny Ronnie’s which once hooked would fall off. I then hooked and landed a 5 lb Carp. It was clear that the Skimmers had been bullied out from these swims, which tends to be their haunts during the winter, so perhaps signs that cold weather is on the way.

 

The upshot was that after switching to feeding hard 4’s with 6mm expander on the hook I connected with five more Carp on the long line, landing two as three were foul hooked – no more Silvers whatsoever. With 45 minutes I went in to the margin with paste where I had been lightly feeding hard 4’s landing another three breaking on another foul hooker – I should have switched to the margin earlier. My early Silvers weighed 6lb 6oz and my six Carp weighed in at 52lb 15oz for a grand total of 59lb 5oz for first on the day.

 

The Silvers was won by Bob “MD” Feltham (pictured right with the winner, who happens to be 13 inches shorter) with 17lb 4oz from peg 14. Bob had two lines running, one at 10 metres with meat and the other shorter with corn. Bob caught biggish Skimmers to 1 ½ lb steady throughout by switching between the two.

 

Bob was helped by the Carp keeping well away as on the whistle pegs 10, 9, 8, 7, and 6 all shouted fish on!! So we know where the critters are at present.

 

Full Result:

 

1.      Mike Nicholls 59-05-0 peg 9

2.      Dave Bacon 54-0-0 peg 8

3.      Terry Church 45-06-0 peg 7

4.      Pete Phillips 42-0-0 peg 5

5.      Mike Jones 30-12-0 peg 16

6.      Harry Muir 28-11-0 peg 10

 

Top Silvers:

 

1.      Bob Feltham 17-04-0 peg 14

2.      Rich Coles 15-08-0 peg 25

3.      Dave Gillard 10-01-0 peg 29