After a couple of poor matches I was keen to get back to winning ways tonight, there were the usual six of us and I pulled peg 4 out of the bag, which I was happy with. I set up a 4 metre whip rig and also a light Drennan Squatt float for fishing the hemp on the pole, if I started catching on it on the whip. I mixed up a little groundbait and was ready for the off, there were quite a few fish topping and everything looked set for a good match.
First put in I had a nice roach and caught well on caster and maggot for the first hour and ended with 45 fish including a nice roach of 8-10oz, everything was going to plan. Alvin on my left and Fieldy next to him were also catching but then these matches are normally tight. Justin was late (as always) and was on peg 2 on my right, as he has no chance of beating the whip anglers on small fish because of his late starts he pins his faith in chopped worm but it hasn’t really paid off yet.
Going into the second hour I was still getting odd fish but the bites were slowing up, Richy White and my mate Arf turned up and I just couldn’t buy a bite apart from the odd tiny perch on maggot. I tried the other, lighter rig but it didn’t really help. I tried going out to 11.5 metres and fishing caster up in the water and had a couple of small roach but was going nowhere fast. I could still see Fieldy whipping out pairs of eyes and Alvin was getting the odd fish and I thought I was miles off the pace.
Max and his massive dog and Scotty also turned up and my peg was getting more and more like Piccadilly Circus by the minute, in fact there were nearly as many people watching as fishing the match! Max reported that Justin had landed a chub and an eel and had also lost two other eels, so maybe his approach was going to pay off this week! After catching 45 fish in the first hour, I only added 17 more in the last two hours and knew I wouldn’t be collecting a brown envelope for the third match on the trot.
As the scales made their way around the pond, Moses (the venue expert) was leading with 5lb 7oz, Fieldy came close with 4lb 14oz and Alvin had 4lb 8oz. My fish weighed more than I thought at 4lb 4oz and Justin’s bonus fish went 3lb 12oz so I’d just missed out and should have just got my head down and fished the maggot all match.
1 – Moses Holbrook (Ilminster) – 5lb 7oz
2 – Graham Field (Taunton) – 4lb 14oz
3 – Alvin Jones (Chard) – 4lb 8oz
At the halfway point in the league, Alvin leads with 4 points followed by Fieldy on 5 and Moses just half a point behind. I’m back here on Sunday so tune in to see if the bad run continues or if I can turn it around.
