Thursday costcutter at Shiplate farm

Back to this popular fishery , and after the normal Thursday bacon butty stop in whitchurch at debs cafe I got to the fishery to find 21 fishing, so a few more than normal.
Had plenty of time for a chat before the draw , good to see Dave wride back and Mark poppleton had also made the journey from devizes to fish, along with all the usual locals and regulars.
I was first into the draw bucket hoping for 1/2/ 3, but wasn't to disappointed to see number 14 on my ticket, this is as close as I have ever been to the fabled peg 14, but I had mr poppleton on 14b and I couldn't see him letting to many fish through and I had ash Saunders to my right on 13a, and the man with the golden arm John "turkey" Thompson was over on peg 1 (best peg in somerset), so I had a grandstand view of him.

I set up four rigs today, a shallow and deep rig for 14 mtrs to fish banded 8,s over 6,s, a margin rig for pellet again, and a corn rig for skimmers at 5 mtrs, where it was virtually the same depth as the long lines,
At the start I began on the short skimmer line after feeding all other lines, I had a short wait before I had a skimmer, but it didn't look to be going anywhere on that line, and with plenty to fizzing on the long line I was soon shipping out the depth rig, and after a short wait I was shipping back in with a carp on, happy days. Mark had pinned all his faith in shallow fishing and dropping a method over the same line, ash had begun on a silvers approach but he was struggling.
Next fish was a skimmer, then another carp, then liners so out with the shallow rig, Mark was having a mare losing a few, mainly foulers possibly, but who knows, most of them looked to be booked correctly looking as to how the elastic was behaving. I was doing ok getting a few shallow, and as far as I could tell, no one was doing to well, even John on peg 1 was quiet, I then had a bit of a bonus on the shallow rig in the shape of a nice grass carp which went 13.12, very useful.

With a couple of hours to go Turkey over on peg 1 began to catch down his margin, and for a while it was entertaining, with the hooked fish doing there best to go round into the bay to his right, some were successful and escaped others John managed to get back, he only lost one lot of elastics, a few hooklengths and one snapped top kit, it is a brutal peg,  I ended up on the depth rig catching right up to the end only odd carp but enough to keep me in the running, with the biggest threat seemingly John on peg 1, Mark to my left had a bad day with lots of lost fish, another day they will all stick but that's fishing.
I was third to weigh and was happy to to put 168lb on the board, and I did think I may have about 160 according to the clicker.

And I was still winning all the way round with the only threat being John on peg 1 but he fell a bit short with 130+. So that's three wins in my last three visits to this nice fishery, looking forward to going back in a fortnight as it's on the side canals.
Silver,s today eventually went to Mike Jones with 29lb, it's been a while coming Mike so well done, 😂.

Weigh sheets below as normal, but I'm not even going to mention I beat Mark by over 100lb as I'm sure it will come back and bite me on the ass at some stage, LOL 😂.