After my week away at Viaduct I wanted to go back and have another go at the skimmers. However, I then realised I actually needed to go as I had left a pair of jeans behind, and also Woody asked me if I could pick up 2 pairs of jeans he left behind… must be an age thing lol. I was on the reserve list for the costcutter but did eventually get in.
The drive down on the Thursday was fairly straightforward and I arrived in good time. I had come with a view to try and catch the skimmers, wanting to avoid a next peg battering and try and improve. I managed to draw peg 110 and this would mean I would have a bit of shade. When I got to the peg there seemed to be a lot of carp about on the surface, I hoped they would not derail my approach!
I set up 3 rigs today; a 4x14 and a 4x16 for fishing at 9m, and a 4x12 for the margins, all rigs had 16 SFLB to 0.11. My approach was to feed gbait (F1 dark and sweet skimmer) with casters, micros and dead reds mixed in. Simple enough, but would it work?
Match started at 10:30, I fed a ball of gbait at 9m straight out in front. Started with the 4x16!rig with caster on the hook. It took a few minutes for me to get some fizzing and then a bite on caster, skimmer number 1 netted. Back out and a similar result, and then a third. I fed a small ball of my mix via a toss pot as it went a bit quiet. The fizzing came back but no bite, changed my hook bait to red maggot and this brought me another skimmer. My first hour continued like this, and I probably had 15lb. The second hour started the same but then things started to go a bit iffy. However, with 25lb in my net I was well happy, especially as the local angler on my right Richard Parker had really struggled to catch skimmers. Next to him on 112 was Howard Webb who was constantly reeling in carp on tea bags and peas.
I tried to feed a new line off to my left at 9m, and initially this improved things with a few quick fire fish. Unfortunately this line and my original line continued to fizz but I couldn’t get a bite, if I did it was a fouler. My match now became very frustrating as I tried to vary feeding and hook baits to catch these skimmers that were clearly in my peg. My catch rate plummeted and after a great start I was struggling. Robert though now began to catch skimmers and he was catching me up.
I caught 3 nice size skimmers in the margin and lost one that put my hook into a sunken branch. To be honest I was really frustrated with how my match went, I couldn’t get the skimmers to take my hook baits regularly, I was lost for ideas. Robert could still catch the odd one quicker than me. When the match ended I was pretty gutted, I’d gone from bagging for nearly 2 hours and struggling the last 4. My only consolation was that I had only hooked 1 carp all day.
I wanted to get away quickly to watch the England football match, but I was going to be the last but one to be weighed in. Nick Ewers had chucked back and was off to watch the footy (do that wouldn’t have improved his day). Finally the scales arrived, Robert had weighed 44lb 4oz and then I weighed 44lb 2oz. It made no difference though as 50lb was needed to get in on the silvers money. Obviously I was thinking I should have done well over 50lb… back to the drawing board.
Rob Eagle won the silvers again, this time from peg 127 with 66lb 2oz. Unsurprisingly Howard won overall with 298lb catching carp steadily through the day.
Full list of weights below. I went into the Royal Oak in Somerton to watch the game, bumped into Dan White and Mark Wynne and so at least I wasn’t Johnny no mates. Not a good game to watch though!
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