The latest club match was fished in front of Uncle Barry’s Café on Sunday with club members fishing for the St John Ambulance Shield. Conditions were dry with a light wind off the land. A large swell and a seven meter tide combined with a bit of weed made holding bottom difficult at times, even at short range and caused a few crossed lines during the evening. The whiting were present in large numbers, and everyone caught fish with a good average size of around 30cm. The whiting kept all the anglers busy in a hectic match with double and treble shots common place. Over 300 fish were caught in what became one of the closest matches in the clubs history.
Gary Hutson
Garry fished at all ranges with three clipped down hooks and relatively large, long and streamlined lug, squid and mackerel baits, which added several larger whiting to 37cm to his tally. Garry was forced to drop his casting distance down after high tide as the weed made long range fishing practically impossible but continued to catch well and steadily built up a catch of 40 fish for a winning length of 1166cm.
The match stretch at Uncle Barry’s Café, looking South
A great win in difficult conditions in one of the closest matches ever in the Skegness club with just 1cm separating first and second place.
Ian Nelson
Ian had noticed Tracy Cooper catch a treble shot early in the match at close range and decided to cast short too, into a gulley around 50 yards out to avoid the weed. The gulley appeared to be a to a natural food trap and held a lot of whiting so Ian targeted it for most of the match. This tactic proved successful for Ian producing double and treble shots of whiting on most casts.
Tony Burman in fourth place with over ten meters of fish
Ian’s rig was a three hook clipped downs with size 2 Kamasan match hooks and small (3cm) fresh lug baits or lug tipped with mackerel on 30cm snoods. Ian timed 10 minutes between casts to try and fill up the three hooks. Despite the constant weed build up along his line causing several lost fish, as rigs were dragged back and forth in the strong backwash, Ian put together a 40 fish catch for a total length of 1165cm to finish in second place.
Adie Cooper
Adie used his standard whiting match rigs comprising of size 1 kamasan hooks tied to long snoods, these were fished on a three hook clipped down rig. Baits were small, fresh lug tipped with mackerel, sandeel, squid and white rag. He was casting to both sides of a bank approximately 100m out but soon found the long casts with his M4GT attracted too much weed so had to drop in short at times.
Tracey Cooper in 8th place with 690cm. Pictured measuring and signing in a fish which has been kept in a bucket of sea water to revive before being returned
He was catching well and matching Ian on his right fish for fish, but the weed caused a disaster for Adie when his traces were through cut twice by another line during tangles with the angler to his left. This lost him five fish which put him behind Ian. Adie couldn’t make up these lost fish in the extremely close fought match and finished in third place with 38 fish for a total length of 1112cm.
Flatfish were scarce tonight with just a few dabs, a tiny codling, an eel and a dogfish the only other species caught. Mark Lawson won the longest round fish prize with a really nice eel of 59cm and John Spalton won the longest flatfish with a 27cm dab.
Jake Clowes in seventh place with 29 fish for 806cm
The last hour of the match became very difficult to fish with the weed causing anglers casting any distance to be swept into tangles with others, so many had no option to fish close in to avoid this. As anglers were forced to fish close they chose to fish slightly larger baits which seemed effective in attracting some larger whiting. Most fished to the clock leaving casts for 10 to 15 minutes between casts.
The match results with the closest run result in memory for the club showing nine meters plus required to get half way
Many thanks to Adie for pegging out the match stretch and to match organiser Russell for running the match, to Chas for collating the results and photographs and to all those anglers travelling down from the Grimsby area to fish with us this week. The next match is planned for Saturday 11 November at Anchor Lane, Ingoldmells.
