Landsend Costcutter, Tuesday 18th April 2017

Travelled down to this one with Tony, a stop off at Shipham for breakfast and it wasn't too bad.  Tony is trying to get this to be a monthly match, but support is a bit thin on the ground with only 8 fishing this one, be good if it took off and gave an alternative Tuesday venue.

Match lake was all ours, so the pegging was spread around to give everyone some space, I dipped into the tub and pulled out 13, not a peg I usually draw and first time on that side of the lake for a long time.  I had Tony next to me on 15 and Gordon Canning opposite on 11.

Four rigs set up, a margin rig which would cover just down to my left under the bushes, further along the end bank and RH edge.  A homemade float with 4x11 stotz to fish meat through the water at 5m, a Drennan crystal dibber to fish across to the island and a rig to fish pellet at full depth.

Bait tray was simple, pellet and meat, I did have a few dead maggots and the best part of a Kilo of worms, left over from the Frenzee festival.  Starting short on meat, I missed one bite, but that was the only indication and after 15 minutes It was over to the island, which is 16.5 metres away, so in for a back aching day...... There were fish visible across in 12" of water, but as expected I had a couple and they just melted away.  Tony had a good view of them and said they came back when I took the pole away and disappeared as soon as the pole went out again.

It was fishing fairly hard all round and I tried the line immediately to my left under the bushes and had a small carp from there, but that was a one off.  Back on the short meat line and all I could get from there were little knocks and a 8oz roach.

With a couple of hours gone and everyone struggling I decided to chop up a few worms and start a new line at 11m feeding just neat worm.  This gave me some bites, a perch, then a carp, a 8oz hybrid and then a run of small perch.  I tried going back over to the island, but my shoulder was complaining at holding 17m on an angle, even the painkillers weren't working, so gave that up.

I tried GB and maggots along the end bank and meat down the RH edge, never had a bite on the RH edge and one perch from the endbank.   I did manage a couple more carp from immediately to my LH side under the bushes, but there were no indications of many fish there, just a bite out of the blue.  I did get a decent skimmer over the worm, but he appeared to be a lonesome soul, as I never got another.

I just kept rotating round all the lines until the last half hour when I stuck it out on the 5m meat line for a couple of big roach, a hybrid and two carp, Tony had been catching across and I knew he'd caught me up and overtaken me in the last 90 minutes and the scales proved this to be the case, with Tony being the only angler breaking the ton today. 

1: Tony Rixon  102.04 peg 15

2: Chris Fox 74.00 peg 13

3: Dave Blakemore 73.07 peg 18

4: Rich Heatley  59.01 peg 6

5: Adam Palmer 55.03 peg 24

6: Gordon Canning  43.08 peg 11

Silvers

1: Gordon Canning 28.02 peg 11