Shiplate farm, Thursday costcutter

Haven't been here this year yet so was really looking forward to it, breakfast stop on the way was breakfast at timothy,s, for a kerbside kitchen I must say it was very good, 4.4. It must be ok as john(mardons)Roberts stops there and he manages to eat it even with his second hand dentures.
Into the fishery and I had to park in the top overflow car park , as along with our match the kingswood disabled bunch were on Hawthorn and the squircle.
Steve was running the match today as Carol is away, but with me old mate him Thomas assisting all was ok, got into the draw tin and out comes 6,

it's an open water peg so the plan was to fish for the silvers with a back up plan to fish pellet at 16mtrs and the waggler at 30mtrs, so a .3g rig for the silvers on two lines at 13 mtrs was out together, a shallow pellet rig for mugging and shallow, and a depth rig at 16mtrs, and a .4g middy fat boy waggler for the 30 mtr line. The water was over a foot down meaning the islands were very exposed ,showing how much they have been undercut by fish and water movement.

For company I had venue professional Gary flinders to my left and John(mardons)Roberts to my right, the other local ace ,titch Williams was on peg 1, so we were really fishing for second, there were a few fish cruising about, but they were more intent on trying to spawn, but it's not quite right yet on this big lake, unlike on the smaller lakes where there was a fair bit of spawning going on.
At the start I began on the 13mtr lines on soft pellet, nothing happened on the left hand side, so a switch to the right have me a 10oz skimmer, then a fouled carp, which came off somewhere out in the middle of the lake, I persevered with trying to catch silvers, but with few already sneaking a few out, it soon became apparent that it was going to be carp for me, so I started attacking the pole and wag lines, as I said there were enough fish on the top to try mugging , but they weren't interested atall. I never managed to get one , and a few others were trying with the same result. Tom thick over on 13 managed a couple slapping blind, and although I couldn't see him titch, had a couple of early fish, but on the whole it was proving difficult, the early part of the match was a pain as there were a lot of fish moving but not feeding foulers were a problem as they were just bumping into the line, I lost several, a few fish began feeding properly towards the end, and I did even one shallow, but the bulk of the fish weren't interested, I thought it would be out of Tom thick and titch Williams for first, the scales started around the far side, and when they got to me Tom was winning with 75.12, I ran him close with 75.4, but I'm claiming a morale victory as Tom dropped a pellet feeder into his margin after he lost the elastic in all his top kits, very poor tackle maintenance there matey, and had a ten pounder, I wasn't bitter , but  I did bite his feeder off his rod and grind it into the gravel in the carpark. LOL 😂.
As expected titch won off Somerset,s best peg with 97lb, well done matey, and Dave wride won the silvers off peg 12 with 20lb.

Back to viaduct for the spring league, but the spawning issues may still be a problem as we don't seem to be getting any settled warm weather to help it along, who knows.