I wasn’t hopeful of a result today as I just can’t get my head round Dillington and keep trying to sort out quality when I should just be getting my head down and catching whatever is in front me. At the draw there were 11 of us, including Richard White who hasn’t fished for ages. I drew peg 2 which is on the point and can be a good peg, peg 1 wasn’t in as there are no branches left on the tree!
On arriving at the pond it was nice to see the level back to normal and the pond had a green-ish tinge. Heardy was on my left and I could see Roger and Moses on the opposite bank, Moses was soon proposing his £1 winner take all side bet, which I stupidly accepted. It was already starting to get really hot as I set my rigs up. I actually set up three!!!!!, a 4 metre whip rig and two rigs for the margins to left and right as they were both different depths. I mixed up some Sensas Roach and was ready to go.
On the whistle I cupped in two balls by the reeds to my left and half a cup of casters and hemp to the right before starting on the whip. I tossed out a small nugget of groundbait and the rig settled and then slid away and I swung in a 3oz roach – easy peasy! I had eight decent roach on the trot before I missed my first bite and then had a couple of small perch, had about 15 fish in the first hour and reckoned on having the best part of 2lb. Things started to slow in the second hour but I couldn’t see anyone setting the world alight, so I plodded on. I did have a nice perch of 8oz and a cracking roach on caster but started to bump and miss more bites.
It was now boiling hot and my maggots were starting to suffer, bites were slowing down so I tried both my inside lines and never had a bite on either! Back on the whip line and this had slowed to a virtual stop, Martin walked up and he was struggling too although he had more fish than me and looking round the pond everyone seemed to be in the same boat. There were quite a few fish topping out further so I set up yet another rig!, this one a Drennan Squatt float for fishing up in the water, but again I never had a bite out on it.
There was a bit of a breeze blowing from left to right but strangely the ‘trip’ was going back the other way. By now Robin was walking too and he said Leighton had caught some nice roach and I’d seen Moses land a good perch and a couple of eels. I tried flicking the whip rig by the reeds to the left and this brought a run of two perch and a roach before it died, trying to the right produced no bites at all. I plumbed up with the Drennan Squatt rig so I could hold the rig still over the whip line and I only caught one small roach right on the whistle to end with 61 fish. I thought I had about 4lb or so but I was sure Moses and Alvin along with Martin had all beaten me so the best I could hope for was a section win by default.
I was first to weigh and my fish actually went 5lb 7oz which was better than I thought, Martin had 8lb 1oz and I knew he’d win it with that. The rest of our section struggled and the next best weight was Steve Parker with 1lb 12oz. Malcolm Levy was the first to weigh in the other section and he had 4lb 13oz so I was still hanging onto second place, Leighton had 2lb 12oz and then Alvin knocked me down into third with 6lb 3oz. Rich weighed 2lb 8oz and then Moses had 4lb 14oz and when Roger weighed 2lb 9oz, it was confirmed I’d snuck in third place and picked up £20.
After six matches and dropping the worst result, Alvin and Martin are jointly leading with 8 points followed by Moses with 13.
1 – Martin Heard (Tiverton) – 8lb 1oz
2 – Alvin Jones (Enterprise Angling) – 6lb 3oz
3 – Jamie Rich (Against Men and Fish) – 5lb 7oz
Sections
A – Steve Parker (Ilminster) – 1lb 12oz
B – Moses Holbrook (Ilminster) – 4lb 14oz
I’m back out here again on Wednesday for the last evening match and I’m currently in fourth place in the league and need a really good result to get in the top three of the league.
