02/01/12 - Shiplate - Westpool

Weight – 18lb 0oz
Catch – 13 Skimmers, 4 Carp, 2 Roach.
Weather – Blustery, sunshine & showers.
Water Temp – 8.2c – 8.2c
Match – Avon Angling Open – 3rd out of 12 – lake (12th out of 24 - overall)

A first time at Shiplate Farm and first impression were good. Speaking to the owners they are a little surprised at how popular the venue is, with plenty of match bookings already for this year.

With 24 booked in, the match was split evenly between Hawthorn and Westpool. Based on information gleaned the pegs to avoid were in the middle, since the fish seem to prefer either end of the canal lakes, so I was a bit disappointed to draw peg 9 on Hawthorn. Originally this lake only had 10 pegs, but a further 5 had been dug, so peg 9 was the old peg 4.

With the cosy pegging, options were a little limited, so decided to target the silvers, since I expected the end pegs to produce plenty of carp.

Initially started at 4m with maggot (jolly 4x14, .08 > 22 silverfish maggot), but after 25mins and no fish, I moved over to 9m were it was deepest, toss potting maggot and micros. After a couple of hours I only had a few small skimmers, plus a pound carp, but except for Tony Rixon (p6) and Kev Molton (p4) I couldn’t see much else being caught.

I had decided not to feed anything beyond 9m so the fish had somewhere to hide and I had somewhere to go if I couldn’t catch at 9m. Originally I hadn’t set up a rig to fish tight to the far bank, due to the shallow water, however watching Tony catching fish after fish had me reaching for a 0.1g HB frostie. I began toss potting maggot & micros tight to the far bank and a new swim at 13m at the bottom of the shelf.

The 13m swim produced a decent skimmer and some smaller fish, but generally it was very slow. I did have a look tight to the far bank for 5mins, but no fish so concentrated at 13m, occasionally dropping back to 9m.

With 45mins to go decided to dump a ½ big pot of maggot, caster & micros tight to the far bank and bugger me it the float didn’t go under when I tried it 20mins later. Over the next 25mins, I had 3 carp, losing a 3rd all on double maggot, to steal 3rd on the lake, which broke my poor run of not picking up for the last 5 matches.

Tony won our lake (see his blog), in fact the fish were waving at him when he arrived! The rest of the lake struggled with Alan Oram weighing 28-12 for 2nd on the lake. Hawthorn in the meantime fished much better. No doubt I will be back soon.

1st 81- 8 – Tony Rixon – West 6
2nd 50-11 – Chris Fox – Haw 2
3rd 38- 0 – Steve Wynne – Haw 6
4th 36- 4 – Phil Harding – Haw 14
5th 32- 4 – Martin McMahon – Haw 5
6th 30- 5 – Martin Lenaghan – Haw 11

Silvers
1st 10-13 - Alan Oram – West 13
2nd 8- 6 – Eddy Wynne – West 15