Thursday 25/04/2019 - Bathampton AA - Over 55's - Bridge Pool

Usual breakfast at Hungry Horace for Geoff and me. Arrived at the fishery in plenty of time for our usual walk around the Lake. It was evident that the Silvers had spawned, the usual casualties in the margins and plenty of weed debris. The water had also coloured up which was welcome. I was thinking Silvers wouldn't feed so fancied pegs 18, 21 preferably 24 for a Carp day.

It was good to see newbe Jeff Grant fishing today, which help boost the attendance to 21. So to give Jeff some enthusiasm to return we let him draw peg 18 sneaking into 4th place and last pick-up. He'll be back!

Today I suffered from peg theft. There's one thing choosing a preferred peg and drawing it and it's another asking me what peg I would prefer and drawing mine! Into the draw bag with two pegs left a preferred 21 and 30. Out comes peg 30 to find myself next to Ray Bazeley again who was on peg 29. Firstly I netted out a dead 2 lb Hybrid that had perished during spawning.

The wind was gusting all over the place nevertheless I set up the waggler to fish towards the opposite island for F1's and Carp. For the Silvers I set up the usual 4x16 Winter Titan to fish top-set plus two with 4mm Baitec expander over hard 4's. I started on this and was surprised to catch a 2 lb flying Skimmer first put-in. The upshot was I had an hour catching Skimmers from 1 lb to 1 1/2 lb whilst topping up with 4mm hard pellet through the kinder pot. The swim died which usually happens when fishing pellet. So I tried for a couple of hours trying to make the waggler work with single maggot over loose feed. When I did get some presentation I caught an F1 but only managed three small ones and another Skimmer. I did hook a 8 lb Carp which fought really hard managing to break my 0.14 hook length, however, there may have been some signs of the hooks spade end helping! After trying to revive the pellet line I set up 13 metres and cupped in a large amount of maggot, then packed the pole away and fished single maggot over it whilst loose feeding. I caught about another 4 lb of Skimmers mostly on the drop. Except for the bloody wind I really enjoyed the day.

My three F1's weighed 2 lb 8 oz and my Silvers 19 lb 4 oz for first in the Silvers.

The match was won by Tony Rixon (pictured right) from my fancied peg 24 with 76 lb of Carp. Tony caught on his favoured 8 mm pellet from many of the options from this peg. See his blog for the details.

it was more than the usual suspects back to the pub. Infact 10 of us. Jeff Grant kept us all longer than usual with his outrageous Irish fishing stories. A right laugh. Someone should write all this down.

Result:

1. Tony Rixon 76-0-0 peg 24
2. Paul Haines 27-13-0 peg 4
3. Bill Story 25-08-0 peg 10
4. Jeff Grant 24-14-0 peg 18

Silvers:

1. Mike Nicholls 19-04-0 peg 30
2. Steve Dawson 17-15-0 peg 16
3. Paul Barnfield 14-02-0 peg 6

Weigh Sheets: