Thursday 17/04/2014 - Coffin Dodgers Day Out - Emerald Fishery - Ruby and Sapphire

Ray Bazeley organised another match at the very popular Emerald Fishery for the Coffin Dodgers. This time we had the back banks of both Sapphire and Ruby. Ray and I travel with Paul Haines and had a great breakfast at the Hill Tops café.

Alan the Fishery owner was waiting for us to ensure we had enough room for our 14 Dodgers – he made another couple of pegs was made available if needed, plus had fenced off out pegs.

It really didn’t matter where you fished as we were all in for a great days fishing. In to the draw container and out comes peg 10 on Ruby. The peg was two down from the corner which was reserved for John Smith. There are a few islands dotted about but luckily I had open water and a bare margins both sides.

I was looking forward to plumbing up as I had fished Ruby two times whilst waiting for the match to start on Emerald, but have yet to plumb. I set up two Ronnie rigs one for on the bottom which I was surprised to find six foot of water and the other 30 inches. I also set up a margin paste rig set to 3 foot which is where I could hold up the plummet because the margin was quite steep running down quickly to full depth. I had made up some experimental paste but didn’t expect to fish this much, but to concentrate on the Silvers.

The weather wasn’t up to much and we were lucky that we all had the wind off our backs, plus some shelter from the conifers behind us on Ruby. There wasn’t much sun today either which could only help.

I started on the full depth Ronnie rig with caster over caster. This didn’t last long as the fish were up in the water in a flash. So in to the shallow Ronnie rig and I started to catch Rudd and Ronnie’s to 8oz. This was interrupted by the odd small accidental Carp. After an hour I started to get pestered by the motherless Minnows which were a sign that the decent Silvers had backed off.

So I thought I would try my paste where I had been feeding some soaked 4’s and it was manic catch a small Carp (up to 1 ½ lb) a bung. However, the Motherless was becoming a nuisance because they were pecking off the loose bits of the soaked 4’s. So I changed to hard 4’s which improved it no end. It was a Carp a bung and as the match progressed the Carp got bigger up to 3lb. With 10 minutes to go I had only three bullets left in the magazine and missed two bites catching a Carp with the last piece of paste. For the last five minutes it was back on the shallow caster and I caught one more Carp for a total of 90.

We throw more bait away than at the fish so it's always satisfying when you just run out of bait and win the match. 

My Carp weighed 157lb and my Silvers 18b 8oz for a total of 175lb 8oz which left me first overall and second in the Silvers.

The Silvers was won by John Bradford (pictured right with the match winner) with 40lb 6oz of Roach and Rudd, all falling to caster shallow.

As expected and as the weight sheets show everyone had a great days fishing. Thanks Ray.

Full Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 175-08-0 peg 10
2. Dave Bacon 114-14-0 peg 13
3. Rich Coles 94-02-0 peg 5
4. John Smith 84-12-0 peg 8
5. Andy Shields 78-04-0 peg 11
6. Dave Gillard  67-08-0 peg 14

Top Silvers:

1. John Bradford 40-06-0 peg 3
2. Mike Nicholls 18-08-0 peg 10
3. Ray Bazeley 17-00-0 peg 7

Weigh Sheets: (One sheet pegs round wrong way and weights not summed)