Thursday costcutter at Shiplate farm

Back to Shiplate today for the Thursday costcutter,  it not before a stop off at lillypool cafe for breakfast, very nice 4.65, hit the spot just right .
Got to the fishery to find numbers down a bit as several people were away on holiday or had work commitments, Carol was back in charge today, so I handed my money over and waited for the draw,
I was first into the bucket, and pull out peg 10, nice peg , can be an excellent silvers peg but also a carp area, there is an island in front but it's about 18.5mtrs away, so a hard day then with all my pole out.

It really does look good, aswell as the island it has a nice right hand margin with about 15 inches of water running all  the way along the edge.

So I set up a couple of pellet rigs for the island, one about a mtr off and the other about 18inches off, which was as far as my pole would go, also another pellet rig for the margin, and lastly a soft pellet rig for 13 mtrs.
Steve sounded the hooter to start us at 10.30, so I cupped in a ball of groundbait at 13 mtrs with some micros in, began feeding hard 6,s to the island and some hard 4,s into the margin.
I began on the soft pellet line hoping for the skimmers to be in residence, but it never happened , I had two 6oz fish, but it was a long wait for a bite, then I hooked a small carp in the tail,(no change there then)which came off at the net, the rig shot up in the tree, so I pulled it down and it came back minus the tip, that was the end to my skimmer fishing then.
So out to the island it was then, in the deeper water to begin with, and I was soon catching but the carp were very small with most being between 12 oz and 2lb,

enjoyable but I needed to catch some better ones, as gary(ned)flinders on 5 had caught a couple of doubles. I couldn't think of many ways to get some better fish in the peg, although suspect there were some in the swim but these small carp were getting to the bait first, some fish were mooching through the swim, which was handy as I managed to mug three good fish , but most still weren't interested, so most of the match was spent over towards the island, I also tried swinging a rig in tight as the bank was nice and clear but i never had a bite on it.

The best rig was the one about 18 inches off in 18 inches of water, as the match went on the fish for a bit better with 2/4lb fish, and towards the end in the last 45minutes  some fish turned up in the margin, and I had three fish from there. At the end I wasn't to sure what I had as I had so many small fish, Gary on 5 had a good end to the match and was admitting to 90lb, I new I had at least that, but how much more I wasn't sure, but I had a fair bit more with 126.15, with Gary being close with his estimate 95lb,

Nigel Wickham had a very good day on the skimmers, putting 47lb into the scales, with all his fish falling to the Wickham wonder worms, well done Nigel.

The weigh sheet below as normal. Back to viaduct this weekend for the next round of the spring league, to be honest nothing but a section win in this the penultimate round will give me any chance of getting into the main frame at the end of the series.