Pleasure Session Shiplate Farm.

With the forecast not being to bad good friend Steve Howell & myself decided to make a short trip to have a go for some silvers on the main lake, We opted for two swims on the far bank pegs 13 & 14 with the wind off are backs making it nice for fishing the waggler as well as the pole. Nice and simple today a drake waggler on 4lb main line and an 0.13 bottom with an 18 PR474 hook to fish just over depth in around 6ft of water towards the middle of the lake & 0.6g PB2 pole float to fish a comfy 13mts on 0.13-0.10 and again an 18 PR434 hook where the depth was much the same as I had further out.

Being as we are both into are match fishing there was always going to be the element of a battle between us so we decided on a fiver' side bet between us and agreed on a 6hr session. Starting at 10 o'clock I began by feeding 3balls of fishmeal ground-bait onto the pole line with some micro pellet added and began the day on the waggler feeding 6mm hard pellet with banded 6mm on the hook. It was a slow start and in the first hour I only had two small skimmer on red maggot but was having problems with the float dragging back towards me due to the tow along the inside of my peg, I did notice Steve's swim was shallower on his waggler line and for some reason wasn't having problems with it pulling through? despite laying some line on the deck I was only getting the odd indication and Steve had already netted around 10 skimmers from what I could see so it was time to try and speed things up on the pole line?.

 (Peanut)

Starting With a 4mm expander on the hook it didnt take my long to get my first skimmer of 8oz followed by a couple up to a 1lb but you would get a few bites before things slowed up so I kept topping it up with the odd ball and trying the waggler again.

I did pick off a few bigger skimmers by leaving the line on the surface after casting as not to pick up the tow but it was taking me a lot longer for bites compared to Steve so was soon back on the pole. by laying the rig in different directions I was catching skimmers from 6-12oz at regular intervals and although they seemed to be of smaller stamp than Steve's could I claw my way back? With a couple of hours to go signs of bubbles appeared where I was fishing and my instinct told me a larger fish was in the swim and I wasn't wrong after netting a nice 5lb bream soon after" things went a bit quite so topped it up again and took a few more skimmers on the waggler and 6mm pellet.

Going into the last hour more signs of bigger fish appeared on my pole swim but after getting some false bites on expanders I began to feed the odd grain of corn and fish a single grain on the hook. it worked as 5mins later I had another  bream around 6lb followed by a lone 1lb Tench before a hail storm put a dampener on things'

 

The last hour was slow but I added a few more skimmers on pellet, there were still odd signs of better fish present but I thing the hail prevented catching more of the bigger bream. Steve had managed to draw the attention of a few carp to 9lb on his waggler line which hopefully had given me chance to catch up?

 

Steve was first to weigh and had a nice days fishing catching nearly all of his skimmer net on the waggler and pellet for a total of 24lb,

 

I felt the two bream may have swung things in my favour and the scales don't lie' so was really pleased to end up with a cracking days fishing for a total of 37lb taking the fiver off peanut to boot"

 

A big thanks to owner Steve Oliver today for allowing Steve & Myself the use of keepnets for the blog and to show the potential of this lake and what's in store for the anglers out there who don't always want to target carp, Steve & Carol run regular open matches on this and two canal lakes and if you were lucky enough to land on a few of these big bream a big weight could be on the cards, Steve goes to a great effort to maintain this fishery in its very picturesque surroundings and cant wait to have a crack at some more matches here in the near future. For further details to any matches contact the fishery on 07895852162.