Match ten of the Skegness Pier club league was fished at Drake Road on Saturday. Fourteen anglers competed in bright and breezy conditions with a moderate onshore wind and surf for the Mrs Wheatcroft Shield. The fishing was good with bass, flounders and eels being the main species caught.
The Top Three
Dave Shorthouse fished two lines; one close in with a continental style match rod and fixed spool and another at longer range on his Century TTSM graphex and multi. He quickly and effectively adapted to where the fish where throughout the match either fishing into the gulley close in or fishing the sand bar further out, using yellowtails, marsh lugworm and peeler crab. He found the yellowtails caught the most bass and blow lug picked up the most flounders, crab struggled to get a bite today.
Dave Shorthouse gave us all a masterclass today with 12 fish for 401cm and first place
At half time he had a good lead with three bass to 51cm on yellowtails and two flounders on blow lug. By presenting both worm types on the top of the bank with clipped down rigs and in the gulley on long snood flappers, he added another three bass and four more flounders to win the match with twelve fish for 401cm.
Karl Nangle started off slowly with two flounders to 32cm on worm and added a 42cm bass just before high water. He fished with his Anyfish Anywhere match Pro and alternated distances and baits to search the bank and gulley for fish.
Super consistent match angler Karl Nangle with one of his bass for 213cm and second place
The fish switched on for Karl adding more bass to 47cm and flounders in the last hour to come in second place with six fish for 213cm.
Daz Rose used a fixed spool and continental style rod in a refined small bait approach to scratch out small flounders, bass and an eel catching seven fish for 195cm.
Scotland International Daz Rose in third place with a small flounder part of his seven fish for 195cm
The South end of the match had fewer large fish than the North end and this approach really paid off here for Daz coming in third place and pushing the extremely experienced Paul Marshall into fourth by just 3cm.
Paul Marshall missed out on third by just 3cm
The rest of the field all caught fish apart from Russell who was right in the centre of the match length and unbelievably had only two bites, one being a huge fish which slack-lined him right into the waves then charged around resulting a snapped line and a lost fish. Possibly the fish damaged his braid catching round one of the numerous rocks and concrete pieces scattered on the beach as it ran into the beach.
Two other large fish were lost right in the surf pulling the fine match hooks, one was a very large bass which would have place Garry Hutson in the prizes and another by Tony Holmes was lost in the surf too.
John Spalton, with a nice double shot of a 50cm bass and flounder
John Spalton started off well with a bass and flounder double shot of 50cm and the longest flatfish of the match of 34cm. The great start was soon forgotten as the bites dried up completely for the southern section where he was pegged and to make matters worse when the fish did briefly return Johns’ new rod inexplicably snapped whilst casting, a real disaster of a match for John.
Several other nice bass were landed including a 54cm bass for Mylo on a whole squid and a decent sole for Ian Nelson. Paul Denholm landed a great green eel of 63cm which won the longest round fish prize and as eels have special league prize goes forward for the biggest eel of the year.
Mylo Disney with a 54cm bass caught on a whole squid
Many thanks to Scott Rennie who set a great example to us all when the fishing was slow on his peg, he did a beach clean and collected all the discarded plastics and rubbish on the beach. Also, many thanks to Chas for pegging out the beach, the great photography and presenting the prizes. Thank you to Russell Parsons for running the match. Thank you to all those who travelled to support the club from Grimsby, Kettering, and Spalding. The next match is at North Shore Road, Skegness on Saturday June 17th and we look forward to seeing you all there again.
