Wednesday 14/11/2012 - Bitterwell Lake - Silvers Only Cost Cutter Open

With Tony Rixon on a midweek sabbatical, who pointed me to a cost cutter Silvers match being fished at Bitterwell Lake every Wednesday, which doesn’t seem to have had much publicity. So I booked in with the match organiser Steve Dawson. Having walked around the Lake on Monday every one seemed to be feeding a form of GB made up from Clive’s “Silage” pellet with some “Smelly stuff” in it. So I thought I would go one better and crush up some of his green micro pellet Umm!

 

Arriving at the draw I was pleasantly surprised to see Ex-pat Steve Rogers (pictured right with his catch of big Skimmers - he dosn't look ant older must have been the climate "down under") in today’s line up. Steve hasn’t fished around this area since 1997. He obviously hasn’t lost any of his fishing or drawing skills as he finished fifth overall.

 

There is no draw queue on these matches, because the draw box is brought to you. In I go and out comes peg 4. I found myself on one of the three pegs on the road side bank between Steve Dawson (venue regular) and John Smith.

 

Steve Dawson said that the Skimmers had been coming from the pegs on the concrete, with Roach and Carp from our pegs. With mild overcast weather conditions I was therefore expecting the Ronnie’s to feed.

 

I set up just the two rigs a 4 metre Ronnie rig and a 4x12 Sensas Stainey. On the whistle I potted in a small ball of the green stuff with some Pinkies at 10 metres. However, I started after the Ronnie’s with caster over caster and I soon had my first 3oz specimen. I kept loose feeding a few casters and soon found that I had Carp up in the water chasing the feed, after a couple of missed bites (Carp liners) I gave up as it was clear the Ronnie’s weren’t going to feed (what’s wrong with them this year)? So it was out on the 10 metre line with the Stainey and single dead red maggot. It was about now that I realised I had made a mistake feeding the green stuff as I was getting liners from Carp and it wasn’t long before I had hooked a 5lb Mirror. After this I did had tree Skimmers on the trot before the swim died again. I foolishly fed again only to repeat the same. I decided to kinder pot a few Pinkies, which resulted in similar again except replace Skimmers with tiny Perch. It wasn’t until the last 30 minutes when I started to loose feed through the catty that things settled down and I started to catch a few Skimmers and Ronnie’s – all to late really. I weighed 8lb 9oz for sixth.

Although there was no coin today I thoroughly enjoyed the day - fishing locally with good company and Des buying the tea's. I will be back and won't be surprised if this match becomes popular.

 

The match was won by Des Shipp (pictured right) with 19lb from peg 9. Des started on CW&C, but in wasn’t until he switched to single red maggot over loose fed maggot did he started to catch decent Roach and Skimmers at 10 metres. How many sports do you get a chance to compete against England Internationals – Not many!!

 

Runner up was venue expert Steve Dawson (pictured lower right). Steve also caught on red maggot with many of his fish coming to the waggler over loose fed caster.

 

Full Result:

 

1.      Des Shipp 19-0-0 peg 9

2.      Steve Dawson 14-09-0 peg 3

3.      John Smith 11-08-0 peg 5

4.      John Andres 10-15-0 peg 11

5.      Steve Rogers 10-11-0 peg 13

6.      Mike Nicholls 8-09-0 peg 4