06/09/2018 - Shiplate Fishery - Cost Cutter - Westpool and Hawthornes

I travelled down with Geoff Francis and as everyone commented the schools were back with heavy traffic everywhere. Breakfast first at Shiplate Lillypool which was less threatful without Tony Rixon.

Beautiful autumn day (my favourite time of year) at a beautiful fishery plus the usual warm welcome from The Gamekeeper and his Goldilocks. Keith Fishery has a new pole the Browning Zero G. I suggest that if your not wealthy don't try it out - you will want one, the best pole I've tried by far.

Matches over the two outside canals today - a change form the Main lake. First into the draw bag and out comes peg 2 on Westpool. Happy with this because it has some history of Chub weights. For company it was to be Gary Flinders on peg 4 with Tony Rixon on peg 6. However, I thought I overheard Tony put a 999 call in for a cat trapped in a tree at Chipping Sodbury, so Gary had a DNA. I started by clearing the sedges from my RH margin whilst Tony walked round to the far bank to clear his preferred fishing zone.

I set up the Ronnies rig and a 4x12 F1 to fish top-set plus two out in front for the Silvers with 4mm Sonubaits expanders over micro. Two paste rigs just in case one that fitted both margins and one to fish over the Silvers line. I started on the expander over kindered micro whilst I started to loose feed 4's in the RH margin and live red maggots in the LH for Ronnies. First fish on the expander was a Ronnie Roach followed by a Tench and a Chub and then a Skimmer - a mixed bag then. Then the Carp arrived landing a 3 pounder losing a 6 pounder due to be under gunned on the elastic taking me into the opposite tree. It went quiet thereafter on this line. But with one Chub in the net I thought I would get more on the maggot on the Ronnie rig so switched to maggot which resulted in plenty of Ronnies, but no Chub! I then foul hooked a decent carp which broke me. There was fizzing on the long line so thought I would plonk the paste over it and caught two more Chub? All makes sense - not! I then had a run of carp on the paste but found I was catching in pairs. After feeding the swim would die for a while for another pair to arrive. I had continued the feeding in both margins so whilst waiting for arrivals I tried the RH margin with paste over the 4's. I caught a few lumps on this, but lost two in the reeds. Again the feeding was similar, catch a couple and had to wait for the return visits. Again whilst waiting I dropped the paste in on the top-set over the maggot line which is a good test to see if the Ronnies are still there or not - if not expect some Carp hauling and that's what happened first drop in a 8 lb Carp. I stayed here for the rest of the match and during the fourth hour I had a stressful carp hauling session with the paste not even settling. Glenn Bailey need not worry - the paste hasn't quite finished - yet. Come the last half hour I could see Carp eating floating maggots caught in the grass and at the same time I stopped catching, adding only two more Carp - a pounderance.

I knew it would be close between Tony and me however, I did have the better peg. Tony weighed in with 170 lb 11 oz for a lake record I then weighed and beat him and his record with 178 lb 12 oz and a first overall. I was hoping to beat by the 1 lb again! My few Silvers weighed 7 lb. If they paid double bubble I would have been tempted to try for both from this peg, providing Tony did the 999 thing again.

The Silvers was won by Ron Stark (pictured right with the match winner and his trusted pooch) with a decent weight of 31 lb 6 oz from Hawthorns peg 12. Ron caught on top-set plus two using his favourite worm caster and GB baits.

Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 178-12-0 peg 2 W
2. Tony Rixon 170-11-0 peg 6 W
3. Claude Jacobs 132-0-0 peg 14 H
4. Lee Waller 127-0-0 peg 10 H

Silvers:

1. Ron Stark 31-06-0 peg 12 H
2. Ray Wickham 14-12-0 peg 13 W

Weigh Sheets: