Shiplate Farm Open (Hawthorns Lake).

After deciding to give fishing a miss yesterday due to the forecast of strong winds and rain I was beginning to wish I had swapped days as Saturday didn't turn out to bad yet just loading the car today saw me get a soaking' At least with this fishery being on my doorstep I didn't have to rush for the 9am draw, Their were 15 of us booked-in today meaning a full lake although Andy France decided to have a day with the family despite turning up at the draw after he saw the weather that greeted us", With him dropping out I did predict that Steve (Peanut) Howell would end up drawing his swim and having an empty peg to boot' and was I right? Yes..! I don't know why he doesn't do the lottery every week as I'm sure they would come up!. For the 3rd match in a row I still managed to draw next to him on peg 3 with him on 4 and 5 being the vacant swim' so we still had are usual quid side bet although I was sure with the extra room he had I was going to be handing him one back today?.

When we arrived at are pegs we were fortunate enough to have the wind off are backs although it was very strong and circling everywhere which meant presentation was going to hamper things somewhat, first up I did make a rig to fish tight over it nearly 3ft of water being an in-line 4x10 float on 0.13-0.11 and an 18 808 hook, next up was a 4x12 Chanti for down track at 6mts on the same |Line/Hook to fish in 6ft of water which would double up to fish the bottom of the far shelf, and last of a 4x10 strung out rig to fish down the edge but not having to much room I wasn't sure it would work?.

At the al-in I fed a small ball of damp micros on the short line with a few red  maggots and cupped a decent amount of sweet corn at the bottom of far sheaf, Starting the match tight over to the far bank with corn on the hook feeding a few grains and some micro pellet over the top via a cad-pot. after 30mins I was still looking for signs of fish but with the wind gusting I had to try something else as it was nearly impossible to present the rig properly. I switched to fishing down the track with double maggot on the hook were I had been feeding a few by hand and soon had a couple of 8oz skimmers but bites were slow and going into the second hour a I had added were a coupe more smaller skimmers. I re-fed the short line with another nugget of micro pellet and had a quick look on the corn swim but didn't get any indications, switching back to fishing down the track I added a 4lb carp followed by a tench of 2lb again on the maggot but I just couldn't get a run of fish together, I'm not going to rabble on how much the rest of the day went as it didn't improve much, I did take another carp from down the track, had 1 bite on corn at the bottom of the shelf resulting in a 5lb common and managed to take another carp tight over to the far bank in the last 30mins when the wind dropped off a little again on corn but apart from that I struggled to put anything much together apart from some more skimmers down the track, The fishing was hard again today as the carp didn't seem to eager to feed but most of which was down to the conditions we a faced. Young Tom Light went on to win the match from peg one fishing down the edge for a total of 43lb odd and 2nd place came from the opposite end of the lake peg 14 with 41lb, The top silvers weight went to Ron Stark catching skimmers and roach on small bits of worm down the track for a total of 14lb odd, As for peanut on peg 4' Well lets just say its now 3 - 0 to me as far as the quid goes along with another nugget from Jonny page further up the lake. Not a very enjoyable day for anybody really but we cant help what the gods throw at us so lets hope the Easter weekend produces some better conditions for all of us.

Full results -

1st Tom Light (Shiplate) peg 1, 43lb 6oz.

2nd Rich Hawkins (Wormheads) peg 14, 41lb 13oz.

3rd Simon Ryall (Shipate) peg 6, 38lb10oz.

Silvers - Ron Stark (Weston Angling) peg 2, 14lb 4oz.