Thursday 8/10/20 – Bathampton AA – Over 55’s and Short Walks

Good turn out of 21 considering an expected morning full of rain. Due to the tree work we had to leave out pegs 18 and 17, this would make peg 19 a good choice.

Dave Gillard called me peg 15 happy with this, I must start parking this end every match! For company I had Whitebaiter Dave Haines on peg 14 and Hughie Evans on peg 16. I love fishing the waggler on pegs where the F1’s live, however, the wind was weird swirling all over the place, but was promised that the wind would subside so set up the waggler. The water looked clear so set up a deep 4 foot margin rig for paste or worm, lastly I set up a 4×18 jolly with a triple bulk to fish top-set plus three for Skimmers.

I started by feeding both margins with micro and the Skimmer line with micro and LR’s and fed a pouch on the waggler line. Started on the Skimmers with double LR’s on the hook and caught a few small Skimmers and an F1 probably before anyone had a bite. By time others started catching the peg died except for tiny Perch. Wasn’t disappointed as I was eager to pick the waggler up, which I did. I was soon catching some decent Ronnie’s and the odd F1, but the wind was murdering accuracy of the loose feed so had to cast where I fed. When I got a decent grouped feed I caught an F1 or a small Carp. The waggler died for the Ronnie’s so knew the Carp were about, so shallowed up and had an indifferent hour landing two decent Carp and losing two round the island and two at the net with the hook pulling due to the force needed to stop them going around the island – bugger. During this spell I foul hooked a decent Skimmer in the dorsal fin. I carried on catching Ronnie’s and the odd F1 until I had a Bramblegate, losing the lot – lose a waggler every time I fish these pegs! So had a quick look in the margin with paste with no indications I reset-up the waggler and carried on with that until an hour to go and went in the margin with worm over micro and had two more decent Carp losing a couple of fouler’s. It wasn’t until the last 15 minutes that the wind fell flat calm and was tempted to pick up the waggler, but glad I didn’t as, just before the all out hooked and landed another decent Carp.

My Silvers weighed 10 lb 14 oz and my Carp 37 lb 9 oz for a match winning total of 48 lb 7 oz.

The Silvers was won by my Apprentice Kev Winstone (pictured right with the match winner) with 29 lb 4 oz from peg 21. Kev caught short using caster over caster. Well done matey. His catch below less his three spikes – Lol:

It was back to the Compton for the usual suspects.
Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 48-07-0 peg 15

2. Paul Haines 40-07-0 peg 7

3. Jeff Grant 40-0-0 peg 6

4. Hughie Evans 34-06-0 peg 16

Silvers:

1. Kev Winstone 29-04-0 peg 21

2. Paul Barnfield 16-12-0 peg 32

3. Hughie Evans 15-04-0 peg 16

Weigh Sheets: