Silverfox Match Angling: Sunday 29/04/2018 - Shiplate Open

Monday, 30 April 2018

Sunday 29/04/2018 - Shiplate Open - Hawthornes and West Pool

Six Bristolians go west and one looked the worse for wear. I travelled with Bay-la. This fishery is a “Ray Munford” it’s so clean you can fish in your best suit.

Everyone is moaning about weather including me. I‘ve had enough of it I wasn’t fooled by the picture right; bloody nasty cold Northerly blowing and five degrees.

Into the draw bucket and out comes peg 9 on Westpool the Canal I was hoping to draw as I expected it to be the most sheltered – wrong. With the pools payout paying top overall and Silvers on each Canal with the highest weights getting the better payout I expected Westpool to provide the top three Silvers weights, but the lower overall weights; so potentially two Silvers on my Canal. So my target set.

I was given some Sonubaits Pro expanders to try. It was easy enough to prepare them the night before – a handful in a plastic bag covered by tap water for 30 minutes, drain water and put in fridge for the morning. I need to try pumping them and see it that works as otherwise it can be wasteful.

I set up a 4x12 Winter to fish top-se plus three for Skimmers over GB/micro with 4mm Sonubait expander on the hook, and the Ronnie rig for maggot over maggot.

Fed a small ball of GB with some loose micro and started loose feeding some maggots over the Ronnie line. I shipped out to find Carp swirling over my feed, plus loads of liners, but the carp would not follow the micro down. They were sat there with their mouths open two inches below the surface waiting for the next batch to arrive. Two foul hookers later – one in the net. I switched to just small hard balls of GB with micro hidden inside. This helped, but not enough. The catching went - one 12 oz Skimmer then a Carp followed by a long wait over fizzing – repeated this six times before the swim slowed and the wind got two strong pushing the float through with it. Bay-la had drawn peg 1 and was catching Chub on corn - he didn’t have any maggot. The Canal was fishing hard and I thought the Silvers weights would be low and low double figures would be enough for the Silvers so abandoned the Skimmers/Carp and concentrated on the Ronnie’s in the shallow margin which were to say the least small but eager to feed. I was doing well on them for an hour then the Carp paid a visit waving their tails at me. This slowed things down for the last hour having to spread the feed all over to pick the odd one off.

My seven Carp weighed 24 lb and my Silvers 13lb 4oz which just fell short on my Canal with Ray Wickham’s 14 lb winning it. I was only half right about where the weight would comes from as all the top weighs came from Hawthorne’s including two near 20lb weights of Silvers. Bay-la had two near misses coming second in both pools on Westpool.

The match was won by Rich Hawkins (pictured right with the Silvers winner) with 140 lb 2 oz from Hawthorne’s peg 7. Rich caught on meat over loose fed meat at top-set plus one.

The Silvers was won by Rob Birch with 21 lb 8 oz from Hawthorne’s peg 15. Rob caught midway using expander over micro.

Usual suspects back to the Lock Keeper with bright red wind burnt faces for a consoling drink. It was another very enjoyable day once a gain at this great fishery.

I concluded that the expanders are well worth a try I will gets some more and try pumping. They are one of the more resilient expander on the hook and with a careful strike they will hang onto the hook for another dripping.

Result: - All Hawthorns Canal