Thursday 23/01/2020 - Bathampton AA - Silvers Priority and Carp - Bridge Pool

I decided to have last weekend off, mainly due to not fancying any of the venues at the moment. So today I was looking forward to getting out again on the Bathampton Silvers thingy. The weather promised to be dry with light winds - Yeh. I had a walk around the pool and found it dour with no signs of fish. That said the colour was about about the same, even though the Pool had been iced over.

Numbers gradually growing back now at 15 and hopefully next match we will have a couple more with 20 about right.

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 24. For a while I have been fancying this peg, but didn't choose a peg today on walkabouts. Nonetheless happy with this. I was in good company with Ray Bazeley on the left and Glenn Bailey on the right.

Last match the Skimmers didn't show with it being a Ronnie match. I expected it to be the similar today.

I set up too much really, probably because I had plenty of time to the all in: The Ronnie rig - not used. The waggler - three casts then retired. The 4x10 maggot dobbing rig. Finally a yellow tip 4x16 to fish top-set plus three barrels at 10 0'clock.

I decided to start long and keep it tight with minimum feed, comprising some Pinkie in a large grape size tight ball of GB to start with double Pinkie on a Tubertini 808 no 20 to a 0.14 GLine - heavy line but if I hook a lump I want to get it out - so a compromise which can be changed at anytime. It took 15 minutes before I hooked my first 12 oz Skimmer. I then had a good run of Skimmers from 2 oz to 2 lb topping up after every fish with tight nuggets through the Kinder pot. After an hour the line faded so I started to feed loose GB and Pinkie again through the kinder - all on the same line. I started to get the odd Ronnie but it was slow, so went back to the hard nuggets and had a F1. I have noticed that the F1's tend to feed in a frenzy above the feed and probably the cause of the Skimmers moving off. I had another F1 before resting it and tried the double red live maggot dobbing down the right with the float set at three foot. I had a couple of F1's before switching back to the long line where I had some more Skimmers. The line died again leaving me with the quadery as to whether the hard nuggets, the loose feed or just too much caused the F1's to venture in. I spent the last hour dobbing maggot and had some more F1's losing a Carp of about 8 lb.

My Silvers weighed 10 lb 6 oz and my F1's 9 lb 6 oz totaling 19 b 12 oz for first in the Silver section and third overall. So a nice days fishing.

Hugie Evans (pictured upper right) won the match with 31 lb 4 oz of Carp from peg 19 fishing maggot hook bait over caster long down his RH edge towards the tree.

The next best part of the day spent with some of the usual suspects back at the pub.

All the Silver section winners pictured:

Result:

B Section:
1. John Fry 10-14-0 peg 8
2. Paul Barnfield 8-14-0 peg 10
C Section:
1. Mike Nicholls 10-06-0 peg 24
2. Hughie Evans 31-04-0 peg 19
Section D:
1. John Smith 12-14-0 peg 27
2. Paul Clayton 12-12-0 peg 29

Weigh Sheets: