Thursday costcutter at Shiplate farm

Before I give the rundown on today's disasters, a quick word about the float only league, it concerns mugging carp, now I for one have no problem with the method, but I've always done it from a seated position, the new way is to stand up and spot fish further out, and then dropping a pellet on it with up to 17.5 mtrs of pole, I did think about banning standing to mug, but  people have already paid I don't think it would be fair to implement a rule for this year, all I will do is put a stop to is  any one stood on there box to do it, on some of the venues we use the pegging is a bit tighter and it is definitely offputting for anglers either side especially if they are trying to catch closer in, so that's it, no box standing.
Back to Shiplate , and Mark Jones was doing the cooking and it was very good , especially as we had proper metal knives and forks, and China plates, so definitely a 4.8, well done mark.

Into the draw bucket and peg 12 comes out, so it was the far bank again, normally a good draw along here , but with the wind blowing along and into the bank, the trip was going to be going with the wind making any presentation very difficult, so with Mark Jones on 1 and ash Saunders on 15 , unless something special happened we were fishing for third or a silver,s pick up.
But it did look nice with plenty of open water in front and a nice bush in the water to my right.

So I set up a couple of rigs for caster or work over groundbait at 11 mtrs, a pellet rig for up and down at 14 mtrs, a meat rig for down by the bush, and a wag for pellet.
At the start I cupped in two balls of groundbait at 11 mtrs with some worm and caster in it, some pellets at 14 mtrs , some via a catty on the wag line, and some meat down by the bush.
It started off ok with a few skimmers on maggot or worm over the groundbait line, but it didn't last, soon all I could catch were small roach on that line, and even after several attempts during the match it never changed, also the wag was wasted , only one lost carp, the long pole pellet line produced one missed bite, and I had to wait till the last 90 minutes to get a few bites down the edge by the bush, where I had three carp, one tench and a couple of hybrids, obviously no good today as my meagre silvers went 8lb and my three carp went 19.2 for 27.2. As expected Mark won off peg 1 and ash was second off 15, with 110lb and 80 odd respectively, third went to Mike nicholls on 6 with 44!b, silvers were won  by Dave wride again with 28lb from peg 10, it seems a lot of venues are being difficult at the mo, to much tasty spawn for the fish to eat possibly, who knows, or it could be just a case that the fish need some proper settled weather, as we did have a very cold night again, who knows . Weigh sheets below.