Sunday 28/06/2020 - Tony Rixon's Short Pole - Todber Manor - Hillview

Yobs tearing down monuments and damaging public property and the police standing back and watching, whilst on the way to Todber at 07:00 on a Sunday morning a motorbike policeman can hide behind bushes with a speed camera. Makes my blood boil. Fair play perfectly positioned where a 60 mph drops to a 30 mph.

This was to be one of Tony's float only's but because all 28 pegs were in he sensibly changed it to a short pole - top set plus three.

Again a Corona draw but with a slight difference as can be seen in Tony's office (looks like he's had a tidy up) - the use of a tombola machine. Personally I can't wait to get back to drawing my own peg. First to have the roll and lady of fate gave me peg 40. Arrived at the peg followed by two Shipp's. Ryan was one side of me on peg 41 and Dad Vince on peg 39 so great company - no moaning from these two.

Ryan came and had a chat and said he had been told the Skimmers had mostly died and the way to winning the Silvers would be Roach. Good news for me. Ryan told a few anglers this.

So just top sets to day for me - two paste rigs one for out in front and one for down the RH edge. Two Ronnie rigs - One top and bottom and a small waggler to try and battle the nasty left to right wind. I put four keep nets in and relised I had left two others I planned to take in case at home.

I started on the waggler just off bottom with single caster over loose feed and found I had attracted a hundreds of 1/2 oz Ronnie's. The waggler wasn't right as the caster was getting ragged on the drop. So on to the top and bottom and had a few Ronnie's and micro Perch. I was missing lots of bites and continually changing the damaged caster. Meanwhile the Shipp's were bagging on small Carp. After 30 minutes I reckon I had 2 lb of Silvers. I then had a small Carp. My next decision was a hindsight bad-un as I switched to the paste for Carp. As I did this I noticed Ryan had switched to full length fishing shallow with casters and had a Skimmer first put in!!! My first 22 put-ins produced 22 small Carp and one net filled with about 60 lb. We then had the first of a couple of storms with high gusting winds and horizontal hail and rain - putting the weather back to pre-lock-down conditions. I had been potting micro and loose feeding hard 4's over the top which brought the fish up in the water producing lots of liners and the need to keep re-baiting. The wind was making things very difficult so changed to the Big H Bullet paste float fished round to the right, down wind using the keep nets as a wind shield. Again the feed was potted micro. This worked well resulting in catching much bigger Carp. I had now filled three nets to 60 lb so for the first time ever I emptied my Silvers back and continued adding Carp. I had a beautiful white Ghost Carp and later a Black Carp and out of recognition of current affairs I put them in the same keep net. Nearing the end of the match panic ensued as I was running out of paste and keep nets, with an estimated 60 lb in each - hopefully. Also my ageing hands were finding it hard to hold the top set - please call all out I had enough. Couldn't do this sort of fishing on a regular basis.

My four nets weighed 245 lb 8 oz for 6th overall. However, with 6 lb picking up in the Silvers I should have stayed with them - lesson learnt - but unlikely. Ryan won the Silvers with the only 38 lb in the Lake! In his defence I don;'t think he went long with the caster solely to catch Skimmers as Ryan likes fishing this way for Carp and I think he looked surprised to catch them. Due to the wind Ryan had to feed by catty

The match was won by Neil Mercer (pictured right) with 335 lb 6 oz from peg 50. Neil caught on 6 mm banded pellet over 6 mm loose feed. He fed about 4 pints. Well done matey.

How can someone DNW on this venue?

Result:

1. Neil Mercer 335-06-0 peg 50
2. Martin Rayett 321 06-0 peg 45
3. Paul Elmes 298-06-0 peg 48
4. Bob Gullick 292-15-0 peg 60
5. Joe McMahon 270-07-0 peg 36
6. Mike Nicholls 245-08-0 peg 40
7. P. RICK 243-13-0 peg 54

Silvers:

1. Ryan Shipp 38-04-0 peg 41
2. Gary Bowden 6-08-0 peg 35
3. Freddie Wojtyla 6-05-0 peg 37
Weigh Sheet: Sheet names were added by Mrs Rixon.