Thursday costcutter at Shiplate farm

Back on the main lake for this one, with only 16 fishing plenty of room really, but before the draw it was time to sample one of Mark jones,s tasty breakfast,s, I wasn't dissapointed, a definite 4.85, so he's getting there, he has also taken over the running of the cafe at bullocks farm, I'm sure he will make a success of it.

I was actually first into the draw tin today, and pulled out peg 3, it's at the far end of the first island on the left hand bank, nice wind in and across, but very strong , I wanted to fish to the island so sat at the right hand end of the peg, making it only!!! 16mtrs to the island.

So I set up a .2g rig for over there, also the same rig would do down the left hand margin, a slightly heavier .3g for the right hand margin where it was a bit deeper, and a silver,s rig for 11 mtrs out in front, at the start I cupped in two balls of groundbait at 11mtrs, just with caster in, and fed each margin by hand and cupped some pellets across to the island,
Started on the silvers line, with maggot, small skimmer first drop, then small roach, switched to caster and had a 1lb skimmer, but that was it, I felt there were some fish there as the float was getting funny indications, but the wind was blowing the rig through to fast, just out of interest I put a soft pellet on, and it seemed  to work I had some more small skimmers, so I sieved  all the casters out of the groundbait, and replaced them with softened micro,s, that worked as I had a couple of better skimmers, I stuck with this for a couple of hours , but the waving tails on the island got to hard to resist, so over I went, to say the wind was making it difficult would be an understatement, if I only weighed 10 stone I would never have been able to do it lol.
But I did manage it, and was rewarded with a few nice carp, all on banded 8,s over 6,s , I lost a few  foulers,  due to the wind hacking the rig through, but as far as I could see no one had much apart from Mike Owens on 11  and was catching on the method slinging to the end of the island in front of him.
I persevered with the island till about an hour from the end when some fish turned up in the left hand margin, where I had a few towards the end, I thought I had 90lb , and when the scales for to me Mike on 11 was winning with 82lb,
My silvers went 10lb and my carp nets went 114 for a 124 total and first on the day.

On the whole the lake fished a bit better, I think the windy cooler weather helped, there was nothing showing on the surface like we have seen on recent matches, weigh sheet below.