Thursday 05/04/2018 - Shiplate Fishery - Cost Cutter - Main Lake

This was Geoff Francis first week as a part time Pensioner and realised by the end of the day how hard it is retiring from business into part time angling! We didn’t realise that Shipham café didn’t open until 08:00, but were lucky they were there preparing the food and opened at 07:30 for us. It was a short wait before we tucked into a decent breakfast. However, the fishery also provided breakfast through Head Chef Mark Jones and his chef’s van (pictured right). Tony Rixon was soon tucking in to a full English whist he explained to the watching audience the key aspects of the “Rixon Scale“ breakfast rating (pictured lower right).

A glorious day but the bloody wind still has that cold bite to it – still in full winter uniform.

Into the Gamekeepers Lodge to pay Carol the £12 pools. No ones here for the money, only the exceptional fishing, company and lovely environment Steve has created.

In to the draw tin and out comes peg 2 providing a short walk for me and Geoff who was on peg 3. Tich walked by and said he drew it on the Sunday’s match and struggled for bites. In fact with every passing angler my expectations were lowered including the venue expert Jim Thomas who hasn’t had a venue record from it yet, but a good Carp peg in the summer – unfortunately the match finished at 16:30 today! Apparently there are some Chub in the peg – where have I heard that before.  Nonetheless I set up a 6” drake straight waggler to fish the far island, which was only 13 metres away, but thought this would give better presentation to the Chub. The Ronnie rig and a 4x12 winter were also set up. I had a plumb around and found the deepest place was at top-set at 3 foot 6 inches with it gradually shallowing to three inches on the far side.

I’m thinking a negative approach would be the order of the day and had some GB left over from the weekend and thought this might be a good start, so fed a neat small ball at top-set pus three. I started on the Ronnie rig with caster over caster and couldn’t get a bite, very unusual, so quickly switched to maggot over maggot and had a Ronnie first try followed by a 1 ½ lb Hybrid.  The wind was making presentation very difficult and had to abandon it for a while. Meanwhile Geoff had landed a Chub on the waggler, so I fed a few maggots over to the island to my left. I had few cast on the waggler but found it difficult to cast due to an over head branch (I guess it’s not normally a problem as it would be very unusual to fish a waggler in this peg). I had one Ronnie and a small Skimmer, again the wind was just too bad. So over the GB, first with a 4mm expander and had a 4oz Skimmer first try, then another smaller one. I switched to single live red maggot and even though the float was going slightly with the wind had a great two hours catching Skimmers from 4 oz to 1 lb averaging 6oz, regularly topping up with a small ball of neat GB. I then had a narrow escape from my pole being bombed by two Muscovy Geese (pictured right) which decided to take off and Steve is right when he said their take-off is similar to that of a Lancaster bomber, needing plenty of runway. Apparently they are family pets named Elvis and Priscilla!

The wind ebbed and the float started going with the under tow coinciding with the fishing slowing. Because the peg is narrow giving a funnelling effect the tow became worse as the day went on. I tried the waggler again with no joy the same for the Ronnie rig. So I decided to open a new swim down to my right with GB laced with Pinkies. The depth was the same as I had been fishing but added an extra six inches to the depth to slow the float down. This worked but this time catching mainly Ronnie’s. I did lose a couple of foulers due to dragging. Right near the end I landed a decent Perch (pictured right). At about this time I looked around to Geoff doing a catch and release on a Carp that leapt out of the water. The Carp was enormous, more like a Dolphin! Geoff lost two more lumps from his margin. A frame position on the hook me thinks.

I finished the match with 23lb 2oz for second Silvers so was well pleased with that from the peg.

The match was won by Roy Ede (pictured right with the Silvers winner) with 39lb 12oz from peg 1. Roy caught down to his right at full depth using corn over corn. I did notice there were a few foul hookers lost.

Geoff and I celebrated his semi-retirement with a pint and a Carvery at Brent House, Geoff’s definitely a carnivore.

Full Result:

1. Roy Ede 39-12-0 peg 1
2. Mike Laird 37-14-0 peg 15
3. Dave Wride 34-12-0 peg 5

Top Silvers:

1. Dave Wride 34-12-0 peg 5
2. Mike Nicholls 23-02-0 peg 2
3. Mike Laird 18-04-0 peg 15

Weigh Sheet: