Skegness Pier Angling Club held the first match of 2024 at Trunch lane on Saturday 13th of January, thirteen fished in pleasant weather conditions with a three foot swell and a bit of weed in the water. The match started slowly with the weed causing rigs to be dragged round and tangling with neighbouring anglers. Once the tide filled, the weed washed closer into the shore and the longer casting anglers were able to card a good length of fish before high tide. The fish also moved closer in around high tide and catch rates improved significantly on the ebb for everyone.
Match winner Adie Cooper with two whiting from a 23 whiting, 657cm total length
Adie Cooper used his casting skills to fish at long range with a simple three hook clipped down rig with size 2 hooks to put together an early lead over the anglers fishing next to him. His tackle comprised of an M4GT and tuned Penn mag reel, best bait was fresh yellowtail or frozen black lug tipped off with tiny pieces of mackerel. Adie caught 23 fish for a total winning length of 657cm.
Russ in third place with 22 fish for 613cm
Russell Parsons in the next peg was able to keep up with Adie using his Zulcron X-14 GT and Daiwa Tournament fixed spool to hit the distant feeding shoals of whiting early in the match. Again, fresh yellowtail tipped with mackerel was the best bait and his rigs were clipped down with slightly longer snoods and size 1 match hooks matching his larger yellowtail baits. Russ and Adie were neck and neck throughout the match with Russ narrowly losing out and dropping into third place with the last few casts of single shots and slightly smaller fish finishing with 22 fish for 613cm.
Tony Burman with a nice whiting one of twenty fish for 529cm
Gary Hutson, Ian Nelson and Tony Burman fished in adjacent pegs to the North of Russell and were all into whiting and dabs from the start at long range and all three had to drop in short over high tide slack to find the fish. They all caught throughout the match and had 20 fish each. Gary did the best in this group by just one fish and came in second place overall, with 21 fish for 627cm. Fresh yellowtails tipped with squid worked well for him attracting some slightly larger whiting.
Paul Dixon and Daz Rose were matching each other fish for fish at the end pegs with some nice sized dabs being caught here along with the whiting. They finished the match with over four meters of fish but were unable to catch up with the big casters’ early lead of over a meter more fish from earlier in the match.
Daz Rose with a nice dab of 29cm which won longest flat prize
The anglers in the southern pegs all struggled this match with weed in the first 100m from the shore making fishing hard and seemingly less fish here perhaps due to a sand bar.
We would like to welcome two new anglers Adam Newson and Gareth Bowman fishing their first match tonight sadly both didn’t record a fish, but they will hopefully both be back to fish the next matches.
Paul Dixon with one of his whiting
Many thanks to Russell for running the match and to Adie for Pegging out the stretch. Thanks to Chas for the great pictures and to those anglers travelling to fish with us. The next match is at Chapel Point on Saturday 27th January, and we look forward to seeing you all then.
