The latest match was fished at North Shore on Saturday 10th February with fourteen anglers fishing in wet conditions with a rough sea. Thankfully minimal weed was present, and a good number of fish were caught including a few dogfish, dabs, flounder and a single thornback ray as well as the dominant whiting. Long distance casting was an important requirement to frame in the top three whilst shorter casting distances did not produce many fish today also those fishing pegs close to the groynes struggled to find any fish at times.
The Top Three
Dave Shorthouse fished a three hook clipped down rig at very long range using his Century graphex Supermatch rod and a tuned ABU 6500 TSR reel, at times he was practically emptying the fully filled spool of line. He caught fish throughout the match in twos and threes not only due to his casting ability but also the top quality of his frozen baits combined with fresh black lug. Dave had been match fishing in Ireland in the summer and while he was there, he’d netted some fantastic fat sandeels, caught mackerel and garfish which he had frozen down himself and these baits where pristine condition, pulling in a continuous stream of whiting and dogfish to win the match with 27 fish for 796cm.
Match winner Dave Shorthouse with a double shot of dogfish and whiting
Adie Cooper fished in his characteristic methodical and determined way tonight. He had a terrible start to the match with a single 22cm dab whilst nearby most anglers were catching double or triple shots of whiting. He kept to his fishing consistent punching out three clipped down baits a long way, every cast, every 12 to 15 minutes on his M4GT. He was using fresh yellow tails, sandeels and mackerel tipped baits. His catch rate picked up around high water and managed to catch up with Dave Shorthouse with 27 fish but just narrowly dropped into second place by a mere 5cm despite catching a bonus dogfish on worm in the last quarter of an hour. Adie finished in second with 27 fish for 791cm.
Adie Cooper in second place, fished all night on sandeel for a dogfish but finally caught one on lug at the end of the match
Dan Jackson fishing towards the North end of the match stretch also had a difficult start to his match. He had spooled up several new reels in the van just before the match and managed to blow these up in the first few casts losing valuable fishing time. The lost rigs were brought in by Chris on the next peg with several fish attached. Once Dan had settled into his rhythm he rapidly started pulling in double and triple shots of fish, adding a bonus dogfish to his card. On high water he cast out and tightened up his line, but it appeared that the lead wouldn’t grip, and the rod tip gently tapped. Dan reeled in and discovered a nice ray had taken his black lug and bluey bait as soon as it had landed which boosted his total length by 57cm and gave him longest round fish prize. However, Dan could not make up the lost time due to the crack offs at the start of the match and this cost him the match he finished in third place with 23 fish for 743cm.
Paul Denholm with a dogfish, Paul had a great start to the match but bites dried up after high tide
The rest of the field caught reasonably good bags of fish on fresh lug and squid or tipping off with fish however there was no real patterns or preferred baits at these ranges. It was good to see over ten dogfish and the single ray caught in a rough sea which was not ideal conditions for these species on the Lincolnshire coast.
Derby Miners Cup Results
Many thanks to those travelling to fish with the club today and to Adie for managing the pegging, to Russell for running the match and to Chas for the great pictures. Chas in addition did his bit for conservation and rescued an injured immature herring gull from Dave’s peg and taking it the next day to the Mablethorpe seal sanctuary where it is recovering. We look forward to seeing you all again in a couple of weeks at our next match.
