Skegness Pier Angling Club fished their latest match at Sandilands National Trust on Saturday. Seventeen anglers competed for the C Smith Cup fishing in light winds and a calm sea with rain at times. The fishing was slow, and the catches were made up of a few smoothhounds, flounders, dabs, weevers, a whiting plus a surprise mackerel for John Spalton. The beach was composed of shallow banks and gulley on the northern end making fishing here very slow most of the hounds where caught towards the southern end of the match stretch where there was flat sand near the outfall.
The beach looking North
Winner of the match was Karl Nangle fishing fresh peeler crab at long range to find four smoothhounds at the start of the match and a dab on the ebb. Karl fished his usual hound set up; dongle rig with a small circle hook casting a long way with his AFAW match pro mk11 and Penn Fathom 12. Winning the match with 381cm.
Match winner Karl Nangle with one of his four hounds for 381cm
Simon Drayton started out fishing for hounds and caught a cracking fish of 105cm first cast to win the longest fish prize. After that he had a long wait for a bite, and it appeared that the small pack of hounds had gone. Simon switched over to a continental approach, targeted smaller species close in on worm and fish strips. He picked up a flounder, smelt and a bass and continued into the last hour when the smaller species switched on the feed, adding another eight fish to come in second place with 10 fish for 294cm. Sadly, although Simon had demonstrated a masterclass in scratching out smaller species the total length of Karls four hounds proved impossible to beat with the shorter fish.
Calm seas with little wind and a bit of rain
In third place was Tony Dunk who fished big ragworm baits tipped with fish to tempt the longest flatfish; a flounder of 29cm winning the longest flat prize. He continued to catch with the slightly bigger baits on the ebb adding another three flounders and a 15cm weever to make a total length of 101cm.
In fourth place was Anthony Broadbent with a decent hound of 87cm caught at long range on crab on his very first chuck. This was it for the rest of the match as they stayed well out of casting range.
Anthony with his decent hound first cast
Lee Williams came in fifth trying everything with tiny whiting and weevers for 62cm and Gary Hutson in sixth with similar fish for 59cm.
The rest of the field caught one or two flounders and weever and six angers blanked illustrating how tough a match it was on the small tides in daylight on the shallow venue.
Many thanks to Russ Parsons for pegging out and running the match today and to Tina Moffatt for the great pictures, thank you to all those travelling from as far as Hull, March and Lincoln to fish with the club today. The next match is at Chapel Point on Saturday 4th October when hopefully we should see an increase in the winter species starting to show along amongst the catches.