Haven’t mentioned mine and Andy’s Evesham trip yet, well it was as excellent as ever. We drank far too much and met a couple of nice young ladies, Oh! and we watched a bit of fishing. Milo Columbo won day one with 6lb odd (which included a decent tench), on day two a chap had two carp! for over 20lb from peg 68 and the team event was won by Van Den Eynde. Roll on next year.
Right back to my latest exploits in the penultimate league match. There was an understrength turnout for this one with only nine anglers putting in an appearance. Still on the plus side hopefully I would be able to get decent points and I drew peg one in the smaller section of four. I also had Graham Field in my section and as he is currently leading the league by one point this would be a good opportunity to claw that back. My peg looked ok with the wind blowing into it and small fish topping.
I set up a 0.5 gram rig for fishing at 11 metres, a 0.6 Drennan Carp rig for fishing towards the overhanging willow and a Colmic Jolly for fishing two sections to hand and up in the water. I mixed up a bag of Sensas Magic and on the whistle cupped in four balls at 11 metres. I started fishing two sections to hand and started catching small perch and rudd quite quickly and after half an hour I had 41 fish. I couldn’t wait to get out to 11 metres and had a couple of perch before catching my first roach, a decent fish of 4oz or so. That roach proved to be a false dawn and I just couldn’t catch on the caster.
Another look on my shorter line and the fish weren’t here in the numbers they were earlier, I did add around another 10 fish but was realising I had lost my way somewhat. Barney Crockett was on the other side of the willow and didn’t seem to be doing much. Big Frank next to him was catching odd fish including the odd better one. Justin Charles opposite was catching well and I was starting to panic. I plumbed up another line at four metres and balled in four big balls of groundbait. While this settled I nicked a few more fish from my shortest line.
With two hours to go I was really struggling and had around 80 fish but nothing of any size, Barney had landed a big eel and Frank had added a big perch, a chub and several eels, Justin had also got in on the act landing two chub. I tried my four metre line with caster and had no bites whatsoever, maggot saw me catch odd perch but I was going nowhere. As odd small fish were topping I tried my up in the water rig but never had a bite on it. I also tried fishing towards the willow but no bites there either.
I was looking forward to the end of the match and just before the end I did have another roach on my four metre line to take my tally to 96 fish. I just couldn’t catch any quality. I packed up and walked up to weigh Robin Cox in, he weighed 3lb 4oz and I reckoned I might just be able to beat that, my fish went 5lb and I knew I wouldn’t be winning any dosh with that. But how had Graham fared? he only went and bagged up, he weighed 14lb 7oz to not only win the section but the match as well. And as Roger Russell also beat me in the section with 7lb 12oz, my three points meant Graham had stretched his lead to three points with one match remaining which is a big ask. The other section was won by Justin Charles with 14lb 2oz.
Next week is the last one in the series so tune in to see if I can hold on to second place.
