Tony Rixon's Float Only, Shiplate, Sunday 22nd July 2018

Got a place as a stand in on this match, haven't been to Shiplate for a while, its a nice, well run fishery and it's not too far from home, what more could you want.

Into the tub and I wasn't too fussed which lake I drew, it happened to be 14 on the main lake, so some decent sized fish to go at.  Paste had been working, so I was informed, so a bit of paste, some meat and some 8mm pellets were pretty much the bait tray.  Two wagglers set up, longish chuck to the island, so 13' Maver Reactorlites for today, in preference to my usual Normarks.

Shallow rig, paste rig, edge rig and full depth pellet rig completed the top kit selection.  The all-in was called and I started on the shallow waggler, first cast it dipped and fish on, nice... until I got it under the rod tip, ready for netting and the hook pulled, back out and same again except this one was landed, I was now thinking of a lovely day catching on the waggler.

I kept at it for another 40 minutes but even with trying again several times through the day, those two bites in the first two casts were the only ones all day on the waggler, shame as I do enjoy fishing it.

I really struggled for the next 4 hours, not getting a bite anywhere in the peg, apart from a couple of skimmers, the carp certainly would settle.  With under a couple of hours to go, there was some signs (bubbles) where I had been feeding pellets at 11m, I fished the rest of the match on this line catching a few on paste to end up 2nd in the section with 92lb, but a long way off the top weights in the match.

Tricky to write much more on what was a match that saw all the action in the first 10 minutes and last 80 minutes.