Thursday - 20/06/2019 - Bathampton AA - Over 55's and Short Walks - Bridge Pool

Travelled alone today full of porridge and baked beans. Arrived to find a new Coffin Dodger from the Silver Dace Juniors era - Gary Bowden. Gary has been out practicing on Bridge Pool and catching loads. I usually put a picture up of the newbies, however, Gary having drew end peg 31 did a FOE before I could take one!! I must say it did make me feel old as he's still a Junior to me!

The weather was to be crap - AGAIN!!

I had the usual walk around and thought peg 14 would be a good shout. Last to the drawbag and was handed peg 27. Happy with this as there are plenty of Skimmers in the area. For company I had matey Chris Ollis on peg 28 and gentleman Pete Turner on 26 - no better person to cross poles with. I set up the 4x16 Winter Titan to fish for Skimmers at top-set plus four, a paste float for the LH margin and the waggler to fish over to the opposite island for F1's/Carp with maggot over loose fed maggot. Trying the waggler out it sat there nice and was thinking it would work well.

I fed some hard 4's down the left, some maggot over and a couple of balls of GB with loose maggot over the Skimmer line where I started with a single LR on the hook. I had a Ronnie first put-in then a small Skimmer. I then started to get indications, lifts and dips - liners with some fiz which was almost certainly F1's sitting above the feed. I had a couple more small Silvers but found it hard going so picked up the waggler. As usual the bloody wind picked up as I did so, but did manage a 1 lb Skimmer and a few Ronnies and small perch before I had to abandon the waggler because the wind dragging through far too quick. In fact I packed it away. I had a quick look down the left with the paste put the wind had increased such that it was a no-no. Back out on the Skimmer line which produced a couple of bottle tops. It looked as if the Pool was fishing very hard. My presentation was awful with the float going hard with the now cold wind with holding back difficult. So I opened a line for the paste close into my right, which meant fishing a Drennan margin top-set a quarter up. It was hard to find any flat spots. I was soon playing a foul hooker which came off. So mind made up to fish here for the rest of the four hours remaining with my back to the blasted wind - it is June isn't it? I kept a few hard 4's going in and was rewarded with four quick decent Carp. I certainly needed the Drennan 25 elastic playing them on just the top-set!! After a water walk (already eaten the banana) I went back and had an hour without a bite. It wasn't until the last knockings that I added another three Carp.

My few Silvers weighed 3 lb 3 oz with my Seven Carp taking my weight to 83 lb which was more than enough to win the match. I must say I do find it exciting catching these Carp on the top kit with heavy elastic - not for the faint hearted - it will surely give Mike Jones nightmares.

The Silver was won by Diddle - aka Dave Haines (pictured right with the match winner) with a decent weight of 15 lb 7 oz from peg 16. Those that know Diddle will know how he caught, for those that do not - it was top-set fishing either maggot or caster short over a smidgen of GB.

It was back to the pub with the usual suspects for a reminisce of fishing trips to Ireland, non concerned actual fishing and catching!

Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 83-0-0 peg 27
2. Tony Rixon 58-01-0 peg 10
3. Hugh Evans 34-07-0 peg 21

Silvers:

1. Dave Haines 15-07-0 peg 16
2. Chris Ollis 13-12-0 peg 28

Weigh Sheets: