Shiplate thursday costcutter

Back to thus lovely looking venue today for the match on the main lake, judith came along for the ride today and get some fresh air, trying to stop her going stir crazy with her broken arm, which does seem to be improving luckily, so a stop off in lillypool for breakfast, nice aswell, i just wish all these cafes would get there beans hot , most of them seem to like serving up up cool beans, but still a 4.8, nice food and good service, and the new open plan seating area is much better. Draw time and john lays the pegs out on the table for us to pick up, i pick up the closest and peg 15 is where im off to. Everyones peg of choice is zero, its a new peg to the right of one, at the entrance.to a a overgrown channel, peg one used to be the finest peg in somerset, but now zero has taken over , well known drawbag, but nice person alan quantrill had the pleasure(again)

i had intended to fish for skimmers today with meat as there had been some excellent weights at the weekend , but had a change.of heart after drawing here as the skimmers seem to be living over on the single digit pegs at the mo, so carp it was then, so a short meat line, two long pellet lines , one shallow and one deep, a margin for each side, that should do i thought for the pole , and a pellet wag to fish to the end bank.

i had the andr(ews)es sisters to my right in the shape of john and rory . All in was called and i started shallow at 14 mtrs slapping a pellet around, fully expecting to catch a couple of carp , but i did it for 30 minutes withoit a touch, so i came in on the short meat line just in case there were some fish short, first drop and a decent skimmer, and that was the only bite i had there all day, in spite of constantly trickling some meat in, and even dump potting towards the end trying to kick start something, i had been feeding the long pole line with pellet, so out on the depth rig, still no fizzing which was strange, two small skimmers.on that, then nothing, so i dumped a big pot of 6,s out there and picked up the pellet wag, first chuck towards the reeds and ive had a 4pounder, and after nearly an hour on that i never had another touch, so after losing my float to a reed stem i conceded , i now a small bit of fizz out long, so back out with an 8mm hard pellet, the float sat there for a few seconds , then was gone, i soon had a nice double figure common in the net, but again that was the only carp i had out there, i did get a few skimmers though, perhaps i shoukd have targeted the skimmers afterall. John to my right had caught a shallow carp in the first few minutes, but that was going to be his only carp of the day, out of desperation i set up a deep wag again to fish over to the reeds, same pattern, one bite one fish. By now even judith was calling me s&@t, nothing like a bit of encouragement from your nearest and dearest, and thus was nothing like encouragement, LOL. All this time alan was landing and losing fish over on zero. Good of him to be putting so many back, obviously trying to give the rest of us a chance to catch up a bit, he even missed his keepnet with a ten pounder, fairplay nice to some sportsmanship in the game. so with about 90 minutes to go i set up another rig to fish long down the left hand margin towards the corner, it looks nice, but a bit awkward to get in tight due to it being a tad overgrown, hopefully it will be sorted now as the owners have got john a helper as it is a huge task just for one person.

I had to settle on fishing out from the bank in about 2 foot of water, started to kick myself for not doing it earlier, as I started to get indications straight away, and the last part of the match was quite enjoyable, apart from having to fish to my left, as im left handed its always awkward , but i had 6 more carp from there, only small ones by the lakes standards, including a nice orange mirror carp,

I ended up with 9carp which went 50lb, as i said small, especially when I had a fish of about 12/13lb in the net aswell, and 5lb of silvers, so 56lb for no good today, alan won over on zero with 180lb, so well done to him, weigh sheet below and me grudgingly handing over the nugget, but to be fair its only one of his he is getting back.😆.