shiplate farm speci lake

steve decided to let us try a test match on the speci lake , basically just to see what was happening in the lake , i.ve fished a couple of these sort of matches over the years and they can go iether way , with lots of sport with good weights or hard affairs with small pockets of fish and only low weights. it did make people curious as i managed to fill it easily with a waiting list ,after being guided to my vip (lol)parking spot by carol the parking attendent we were soon ready to draw. i let the oldest angler there in the shape of roger andoniou (forgot about jim thomas)draw for me and i ended up between phil(fabio)harding on 7 and the on site proffessional jim thomas on 5, so for those of you out there who cant work it out i was on 6, jim told me that this was to be the first match he has fished in 5 years , as he went missing when he maved into a caravan on the banks of the huntspill river and began making clothes pegs with the lovely brenda who is busy writing a recipe book for hedgehogs, i dont think anyone has told them they are endangered.
i fancied 1 to 3 or 15 on the far bank , as the early pegs had easy access to an island whereas 15 was the end peg but 6 would have to do. the lake was suppesed to be full of small skimmers with odd bream to 11lb plus some oddballs in the shape of sturgeon and grass carp, and the carp go to 30lb, i set up a .5grm rig with a 16 6313 on .12 for the shimmers and bream plus using 5 elastic with a pulla bung even a carp could be landed with a bit of luck, a margin rig with a 14 xedion hook on .16 for corn(meat is banned on this lake) and a wag rig to fish 8mm on the deck, but the wind started so that was never used except for one experimental cast halfway through.
at the start i cupped in some softened 3mm at 13 and 16 mtrs and fed some corn down the edge, straight out with a soft pellet at 13 mtrs and 5 mins in my first bite and i was attached to a good carp, after about 30 secs it all went slack as the rig came off, i thought the elastic had snapped but it was new stuff what happenned was that the knot in the end of the laccy had come undone allowing the dacron connector to pull straight off, that was a first , but some of these latex,s are hard to tie as they come pre lubed and knots try and undo themselves, i will have to blame that one on the tackle dealer who did it(umm).the rest of the match was fairly uneventfull with only small skimmers taking the bait and apart from the carp on soft pellet that was the only bite i had on pellet all the rest came on maggot, jim next door was catching on the wag with mag over g bait so i wandered back to the van and got some crumb, stopping to talk to tom thick on peg 3 he seemed to be catching small skimmers on soft pellet, he certainly seems to have the soft pellet fishing sorted.
the grounbait didnt seem to make any difference i had to keep swithcing between the 13 and 16 mtr lines as i couldnt get more than a couple of bites off each line before i had to move, by the end i had been beaten each side as jim ended up with 60 plus skimmers and fabio had 3 carp to my left , one on a method and 2 down the edge on corn. the match was won by tom thick on 3 with 28.15 which included 23.2 of silvers
2nd went to mike west on 15 with 25.11
3rd martin lenaghan 22.8 which had an 8.4 sturgeon in
4th phil harding 16.6 peg 7
5th jim thomas 15.7 (1st in silvers by default)
6th martin alexander 15.1 peg 13 in his catch was a 11lb grassie
my skimmers went 6.15 for nothing today oh i nearly forgot tim clark fished and his one method caught bream only went 5.12 so the 3 quid was mine, by i had to pay that out in side bets to more capable anglers , thanks tim.