Friday 10 May 2019

Thursday 09/05/2019 - Bathampton AA - Over 55's - Bridge Pool

Geoff not fishing today due to working in London, which he hates in spades. However, I think he made the right choice weather wise, it was horrendous. Rain on and off all day and very high winds (he hates wind just as much as me). Some of the rain was very heavy at times.

With all the organisers and gophers away on holiday Tony Rixon stepped in as acting match organiser. However, we didn't expect him bring his "Pop -Up" Gay Bar - pictured right. What was worrying he kept dropping £20 notes!! Pete Taylor his first customer but would only enter with hands in trouser pockets!

A comment overheard in the bar "All the 17 metre to the island pegs will be in today" - not quite.

Only 14 fishing today - some must have heard about the Pop-Up. Low numbers does make it difficult to peg. Having had a walk around the Pool I noticed that it was less coloured at the bottom end so fancied peg 18 and nearly got it. Only two left in the bag when I drew 18 and 31. Bugger peg 31 it was to be. I hate it this far down as it's in between Silver and Carp pegs, I rather be right down the bottom than here. For company I had no one as I had two empty pegs to my right and three to my left - a good area then. Opposite I could shout across to Enigma on peg 4.

I cant remember when a Carp came from this peg but set up a margin rig for them anyway. I set up the waggler which I found impossible to fish over to the island due to the horrid wind. Come to think of it I can't remember when I fished here without there being wind! I set up a 4x14 Winter Titan or the Skimmers to fish at top-set plus two.

I started on the Titan with expander over micro expecting a quick response, this didn't happen. It took 15 minutes to get my first Skimmer. I soon had three more so not a bad start. We then had a very heavy downpour. After which I couldn't catch. So switched to feeding micro in some GB which worked to some extent. This also got the F1's Fizzing up above the GB and I think was deterring the Skimmers. I set up a 4x12 rig set to 3 foot and had a couple of small Ronnies and one decent Skimmer and an F1. The wind was killing the presentation. With Enigma catching Skimmers regularly in the relative calm of peg 4 I needed to catch some Carp so spent 2 hours trying various baits. With the Roach not feeding my first choice was maggot. This produced a Bumble Bee every put in. So fed them off and had one Skimmer and one foul hooked lump which broke me. Last hour decided to feed the Titan line heavy (for me) and thought I was going to have a good last hour after catching a Tench and another decent Skimmer. Alas not even though I fed a lot of bait I had one more Skimmer and some Bumble Bee's. I was bloody freezing by the end and was glad to hear the all out.

My Silvers weighed 15 lb 9 oz and the 1 lb F1 taking me to 16 lb 9 oz.

The match was won again my Tony Rixon with 94 lb 5 oz from peg 15. Tony caught long to the island on hard 8 mm pellets - see his blog for details.

The Silvers was won by Paul Barnfield (pictured right with his great net of Skimmers) with 31 lb 4 oz from peg 27. Paul caught on red maggot over micro and maggot all potted. Paul caught most of his fish in the first 4 hours. He said he only fed 2 pints of micro and 2 pints of maggot - ONLY! I must be seriously under feeding.

It was back to the pub with a reduced numbers up suspects. We were hoping the log fire would lite - not.

Result:

1. Tony Rixon 94-05-0 peg 15
2. Dave Wride 72-0-0 peg 9
3. Paul Barnfield 38-10-0 peg 27

Silvers:

1. Paul Barnfield 31-04-0 Peg 27
2. Steve Dawson 24-0-0 peg 4
3. Mike Jones 18-06-0 peg 18

Soggy Weigh Sheets:

















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