Thursday 8 January 2015

Thursday 08/01/2015 - Bathampton AA/Veals Silvers Championship - Huntstrete - Bridge Pool

After a long layoff over the Christmas and New Year due to family commitments and a heavy cold it was out today for the first time this year on the Bathampton Silvers league. I was hoping for a good draw to start the league off. However, it wasn’t to be as in to the bank bag and out comes peg 25. I was up against pegs 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 and 24. Realistically my peg was only better than peg 23 that was unless the Skimmers showed up in numbers.

Peg 25 is well set back from both pegs 24 and 26 by 7 metres so I wasn’t expecting to catch the Ronnie’s so Skimmers were the target.

 I had brought the feeder and waggler rod in case I dew this peg and set both up. I also set up the pole with a 4x 16 Jolly to be fished at full depth at 6 metres where the Lake bottom levelled out.

I fed the 6 metres line with a big pot of a mix of all the hook baits on the table – dead reds, Pinky, caster and wetted micro.

However, I started on the feeder and had two quick Ronnie’s both less than 1/2oz! The feeder spent the rest of the match sat in the wet grass.

On to the pole with maggot and I was soon catch and dropping off more less than ½ Ronnie’s irrespective of the hook bait – except caster which produced nothing. I found sitting on 4 mm soft pellet did produce the odd 2 oz Skimmer. I stayed on the pellet for a good few hours trying the various baits including double micro which did produce some even smaller bottle tops. The difficult part was deciding when to top up as when I did the swim died for a while because small Skimmers will come up ij the water to intercept the feed. I did have half hour on the waggler with caster over loose fed caster and even though the presentation was really good I only had a ½ Rudd and a ½ oz Ronnie!!
I ended the match with 30 odd tiny Skimmers for a miserable 3lb 8oz for as expected last but one in the section. The Ronnie’s fed but not the Skimmer as very few were caught as the weigh sheet bear witness.

The match was won by Barry Fitchew with 11lb 11oz of Ronnie’s and Perch from peg 21. Barry caught on hid top set with casters and other rest baits caught over loose fed caster and some micro.

I like the pictured of Barry upper right. I also like the picture lower right.

Full Result:

  1. Barry Fitchew 11-11-0 peg 21
  2. Paul Dicks 10-14-0 peg 15
  3. Paul Barnfield 10-06-0 peg 18
  4. Charlie Barnes 9-02-0 peg 8
  5. Rich Coles 8-11-0 peg 14
  6. John Smith 8-05-0 peg 12

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