Shiplate Farm Open Match, Hawthorns Lake.

After a nice breakfast at the wooden spoon café and a good chat with a few of todays anglers I made my way to the fishery with the wife who I had for company today, After a nice free cuppa and a full lake with 15 fishing I decided to chance the misses pick my peg today as I couldn't be worse than my draw hand at the moment? I fancied a draw in the lower numbers and she didn't disappoint by handing me peg 5 which for a start isn't as wide as the further pegs being just over 13mts and after plumbing up I had just over 12inches of water as tight as I could get,

 

I assembled the same rig as I had used for a similar swim I had yesterday being 0.1g on 0.13-0.12 and an 18 pellet hook, in previous matches at this time of the year I have had some good weights shallow down the track at 8mts but there weren't many fish showing on the top so I wasn't sure it would work after all the rain we had yesterday, I had a nice bit of reed cover down my inside but with the depth being around 6ft off the reeds I chose to fish shallow down the edge with meet on the hook feeding the same by hand. Company wise I had Andy France on peg 4 and young John Hawkins on peg 6. At the all in I began to flick a few 6mm cubes of meat down the edge and began tight over with a cube of meat on the hook feeding 6 cubes and some hemp via a cad pot over the top, I had a 3lb carp after 15mins followed by another 5mins later of 6lb but then things got iffy with liners ect so I tried shallowing up half depth but it didn't produce anything. after a couple of hours I had 6 fish and although John was catching well across from peg 6 Andy was struggling on peg 4 so we seemed to be in the same boat, I felt the carp weren't happy to sit over any bigger feed bait so I switched to a hard 6mm pellet at dead depth and began to feed dampened micro pellets over the top.

 

I had to waits for bites but added some bigger fish to 8lb and word of warning the fish in this lake take steroids because they never give up" I added another 6 fish to my total but it seemed that John couldn't go wrong and was taking a fish on nearly each put-in fishing pretty much the same? I kept on having a look on my inside lines but wasn't getting any signs they were in the area so kept at it across but when the sun moved around halfway through the match it seemed to put the fish right off as things slowed down to nothing for the 3 of us. I didn't think that fishing further away from the far bank was worth it as Andy was fishing in the slightly deeper water and only getting the odd silver fish or foul hooked carp so stuck it out just sitting and waiting for bites across until the last hour when I managed to snare a few carp shallow down the edge on meat.

 Andy had called it a day with an hour to go and although John had struggled in the last couple of hours I felt he had done enough to win. When the scales arrived at John the top weight from peg 10 was Steve Howell 97lb odd before John put 134lb on the scales to take the win so well done mate,

 Winner John Hawkins.

 A Few Of My Fish.

 

 

I felt I chose the wrong bait from the start today and although meat is usually a banker for a few fish it wasn't the case today, The slight change in weather showed the fish really wanted minimum feed to draw them into the swim and I also noticed when you shipped the pole away from the far bank they would return to the spot you were feeding".

 Full Results -

1st John Hawkins, (Bristol Post office) peg 6, 134lb 12oz.

2nd Steve Howell (Shiplate) peg 10, 97lb 6oz .

3rd Russ Pecker, (Thatchers Tackle) peg 14, 93lb 12oz.

4th John Page (Weston A.A) peg 1, 84lb.