Thursday costcutter, shiplate farm

Bit of a change today, back to shiplate, its a venue I havnt fished in nearly 2 years, and with the Rovers v city charity match on Saturday and with a round of my float only league here in August I thought it would be a good idea to go and see how its going, the warm welcome from Carol and Steve was a good as ever, and the fishery looked good with plenty of tree's and vegetation round all lakes, and there seemed a lot less water fowl which was a major plus.
The draw was soon organised and I was second into the bucket, opened the card and there was number 1 looking back at me , a good draw on all lakes , but especially good today as we were on the main lake.

It's a good peg with an island in front and a good margin to the right , plus it can be a good shallow on the pole straight out, so the rigs were soon sorted, a margin meat rig  , a deep pellet rig for 13/14 mtrs and a shallow pellet rig, I managed to get my hands on some of the new drennan clear slapper/margin floats so I put the .2g one on to try, they also have some new wire stemmed carp floats which seem nice aswell, all will be in veals from next week.

I also set up a pellet wag for the island but it didn't get much of an airing as the water was covered in that horrible white fluffy crap which comes of the willow tree's making rod and line fishing a nightmare, I did lose a fish on it , but it was fouled,
At the start up began on the deep pellet rig , fully expecting a couple of bites or liners at least , but it wasn't happening , Lee Waller was next to me on 1a, the peg which won  Sundays match, and he wasn't getting anything either, so 45 mins out of desperation I went for the shallow rig, after a couple of slaps I noticed a fish mooching along at 3 mtrs so I quickly got back to my topkit, slapped the pellet on its nose and it took it, happy days, 9lb in the net then, back out to 13 mtrs and I had a couple shallow , and I was beginning to get a bit of fizzing, which I always like to see, at least you know they are there, the new drennan float fished and sat nicely so I think they are on to a winner with those,
It wasn't a manic days fishing by any standards, but it was enjoyable as you needed to work to get bites, but as far as I could see, the rest of the lake had switched off a bit, so I just kept plugging away shallow initially but having been throwing a few pieces of meat down the edge I kept trying it, and I did get 5 fish from down there aswell, by the end I thought I had just over 100lb as my clicker registered 120lb, but it pays to over click so as not to go over in the net, lol, I nearly forgot to mention gabe skarba who went to hill view on Wednesday, and he had three nets in by the end , trouble was he had over 100lb in 2 of them , so losing both, I think he only had 45lb in the third, well done matey my mistake pales into insignificance against that.
Back to today and I wasn't to far out with the clicker as my net's went 108.7 for first on the day.

2nd Ashley Saunders on14 with 50.2
3rd Mike Owen on 15 with 48lb
4th ticth Williams on 11 with 43.13
5th Gary Flanders on 3 with 33.14
6th Phil Deakin on 14b with 31.2
Silver's went to Mike Jones on 13 with 24.12 of mainly whitebait, well mini Rudd actually, most carp were caught on the pole today, one or two fell to the lead , but they seemed to have had a bit of an off day, and looking at the forecast for Saturday I think it may be a bit of a grueller for some .