Thursday 03/09/2020 - Shiplate Fishery - Cost Cutter - Main Lake

The usual warm welcome from Carol and Steve, including Elvis today - pictured. The weather was warm but damp equaling muggy so should fish well?

Selected my peg from the table and found myself on peg 14 again, so happy with this. For company I had organiser Gary Flinders on peg 14 B and Lee Williams on peg 13 A - so good company.

I set up the same as last time on this peg - 0.5 gram paste float to fish top set plus one barrel, a 0.3 gram paste float for the LH margin which was the perfect depth. In the unlikely event that the Skimmers would go mad again I set up the short Ronnie rig.

I started by feeding a pot of micro on both paste lines starting on the 0.5 gram rig and was soon playing an angry Carp which broke me. Re-fed and again had a run of decent Skimmers and was hoping for another red letter day, until I hook another Carp which took an age to net totally disrupting my Skimmer line rendering it very slow with only a few smaller Skimmers finding the net. I tried feeding some GB over the line but just wasted time. So three hours into the match and with now two Carp in the net and 10 lb of Skimmers I switched to the short Ronnie rig with caster over caster and caught well - Ronnie's, small Skimmers and the odd Perch to 1 lb. I do enjoy this sort of fishing as it continues to add to the net tally and keeps me busy. I think the need to keep busy is a legacy from river fishing and the need to keep casting the float. With 45 minutes to go I heard some bank side chat that there was a couple of high twenty's of Silvers and thought I was off that pace. So had a go in the margin and first dob in had a near 20 lb Carp followed quickly by four more decent Carp. It left me thinking how it might be possible to get these fish in the margin early in the match, if this was possible a big weight would be on the cards.

My seven Carp weighed 69 lb 4 oz and my Slivers 29 lb for a second in the Silvers pick up which did surprise me, that said I was thinking the Ronnie's were of a better stamp than last match I fished here. The question remains as to whether I would have won the Silvers had I stayed with them to the end - who knows. Still a very enjoyable days fishing. It fished well today which meant a long wait until I got weighed in.

There was a lot of feathers around my peg but didn't hear any gun shots - not sure you can get silencers for shot guns.

The match was won by Tony Thick who is the Father of Tom Thick who currently holds the Lake match record (pictured right with the Silvers winner) with 272 lb 13 oz from peg 1. Tony caught mostly down his RH edge using meat over kindered meat and hemp seed. What amused me was the number of phone calls Tony had from Tom - was Tom trying to slow dad's catch rate I wondered - lol!!

The Silvers was won by Lee Williams from peg 13 A with 33 lb 4 oz. Lee caught at 10 metres fishing single and double maggot over GB.

Well done to both.

Result:

1. Tony Thick 273-13-0 peg 1

2. Tony Rixon 211-10-0 peg 2

3. John Andres 182-09-0 peg 4

Silvers:

1. Lee Williams 33-04-0 peg 13 A

2. Mike Nicholls 29-0-0 peg 14

Weigh Sheet: