landsend weds open

firstly i have got to say the shipham breakfast is lovely so its good to see it has reopened as its a good stop off cafe for nearly all venues to the south, and as long as it keeps being good the new owners should do well, time will tell.
with 15 fishing we just stayed on the match lake, with the fish still spawning until tues morning it could be a testing day as the carp seemed to be happy to be laying back on the surface having a fag and a coffee to recover,
i let des shipp draw for me and he pulled out 2 tickets and i took the wrong one as i opened up and number 13 was looking at me, whilst des opened up peg 5 , bugger i chose the wrong one. and with tom thick pulling 19 i thought the writing was going to be on the wall again, best hope for the rest of us was 3rd place.
back to my peg and arriving at the swim there were plenty of carp on the surface sunning them selves, so i set up the normal mugging rig with an 18 b960 on .16. a 4x10 rig for fishing on the top of the shelf up the left hand margin in 2ft of water on .16 with a 16 b960, and a 4x12 for meat in the right hand margin, for company i had joe thompson opposite on 11 and the old granny fleecer himself ken rayner(fishinken)on 15.
at the start it was straight out on the mugger and i hooked one first attempt, which is normal, but after landing it most of the other shadows had dissapeared, i did stick with it for the first hour and did get another 3 but going in to the 2nd hour it became clear that it wasnt going to happen on this method today, so it was into the left hand margin and over to the island on banded 8mm, the left hand margin is full of snags with branches and brambles littering the bottom , but if you go 16.5 mtrs up the bank to just past a wooden post sticking out of the water the bottom is quite clean so you can fish properly, also its the same distance to the island so a hard day was in the offing. what made it more difficult was that you couldnt feed up the left as there is a tree at 8mtrs which has some sticking out which stops the flight of the pellets so everything had to be cupped to that spot which is hard work at that distance, the island was easier as the catty did the work, so the next 3 hours were spent swapping between the island and the left hand margin catching the odd carp but they were on the small side, my biggest fish were the two i had straight away on the mugger rig. i did try and catch short up the left hand side as there is a spot at 8mtr , i did manage 2 small ones from there but then got beaten up bably in more underwater snags so i binned that line, the meat line gave me 6 fish towards the end but again i lost 2 fish with rigs in a snag , if the fish swam out it was ok but if they skooted along the bank the snag got me, i will be taking the old stinger basher with stronger elastic in the future.
being up in the corner its hard to see whats going on ,i could see a bit of splashing from toms peg but that was the only real action i could see, ken had a few and joe opposite had begun to catch late on meat in his margin, but i never had a clue as to how the other bank had fished.
luckily mike duckett and tom thick had started the weigh in so i was just a scales spectator today which was nice, no one had much in the first couple of pegs but des was admitting to having a really nice!!!!!!!!! day on the silvers and he wasnt wrong as he put 75.8 of silvers on the scales and 49lb of carp for 124.8 and first on the day, he caught all his fish on single caster fished to the far bank between 6 and 12 inches deep and feeding with a catty was much better than cupping, he is certainly a hard man to beat on any method and venue he turns up to.
spare a thought for our own silvers ace john(the gimp)bradford on peg 6 who had sit and watch it and he only had one bite on caster, but i did warn him that des would steal all his fish off him
2nd tom thick 106.2 peg 19
3rd tony rixon 86.8 peg 13
4th ken(the savings stealer)rayner 59.7 peg 15
5th chris davis 58.15 peg 24
6th ed wynne 49.13 peg 3
silvers des shipp 75.8 peg 5 catching chub, ide,perch,rudd,skimmers,tench well everything really lol, the man is a bit of a fenomenom really. i know that word begins with a ph but the word i really wanted to use also begins with an f but i cant put it on here cos my mum reads it