25/05/12 - Eden Vale

Weight - 23lb 13oz
Catch - 28 Skimmers, 10 Roach, 3 Hybrid, 1 Carp
Weather - Hot & sunny, gusty wind

An e-mail from Mark suggested a skimmer session at Eden Vale lake, which is a venue I have only fished once before a couple of years ago. Its a large natural lake situated on the outskirts of Westbury, which can be fished on a day ticket.

We settled on pegs 15 & 16 where it was 6ft at 13m. So 4 balls of groundbait, micros, 4mm pellet and corn was deposited. With the prospect of skimmers I set up 2 rigs. A 1g jean Francois with double bulk and a more conventional 0.5g HB chump. Bait was 4mm expander

Well the session didn't quite go according to plan. Mark soon switched to a half depth rig and caught most of his 52lb that way. Those skimmers just didn't want to be on the deck. I persevered with with the deck rig, mainly because I was being lazy and couldn't be bothered to setup another rig, however after a few couple of hours I got fed up of watching Mark, so switched to a shallow rig and caught, but I couldn't get the better 1lb+ skimmers, since most of mine were 6oz. I did however catch some cracking roach, the biggest weighing 1lb 2oz.

I had been feeding my margin with 6s and corn and managed a really nice looking linear mirror carp on double corn. I did lose another which felt bigger, but the hook pulled whilst trying to get it out of snag.