With the weather being warm with clouds and ripple, the fishing promised to be good and there was a distinct buzz at the draw as everyone was hoping for a decent peg. Our welcomed guest Mick the Chippy stepped forward and drew for Nick and myself, I got 26 and I think Nick had 20…………..both worth a few fish although I fancied John Pantry on 32 to take the honours. I have never been drawn up that end of that bank before so it was a bit of an unknown to me but with a reasonable chuck to the right hand island, some open water in front and a decent bush down both margins I felt comfortable for a ton plus. To my left I had last year’s winner Paul Kell with a long chuck to the island but miles of space up the left margin and lots of open water.
My approach was to be 3 fold, the pellet waggler out in front with the wind pushing it towards the point of the island, the shallow pole at around 8m and then a deep margin rig in front of both margin bushes as I had a good 4’ there. No need to go through my rigs as you will know them by now but they consisted of the usual NG Floats in glorious red with the usual line, hooks and shotting style. I set up 2 waggler rods at different depths, 2 shallow pole rigs at different depths and a margin rig plumbed up to suit both sides with the bulk just off bottom. Bait would be 6mm hard pellet out in front and corn down the edge with mussles for the hook.
At the start I fed 5 babies heads on the pole line and proceeded to go out with the waggler and had a fish within a minute………and then a duckling! The ducks soon swarm around you if you are feeding but I put up with them for an hour and had 30lb in the net. I then wanted to try the pole line as there was a lot of fizzing and the ducks were annoying me out by the island. During the next hour I had another 30lb with some nice sized fish.
It wasn’t long before the ducklings arrived again and for the third hour I alternated between pole and waggler to get away from the pesky things but the sport slowed down as I was holding back from feeding to try and allow the ducks to move away while I cast out. I could see that soon I might give up fishing shallow all together so in preparation for this I fed 3 large cups of corn from 4’ off the water down both margin swims.
With about 2 hours left I had 80lb in the net and saw that Paul Kell had started catching well down the edge so out came the margin rig and I proceeded to catch steadily with fish between 3lb and 8lb coming out as well as a few greedy silvers taking a whole mussel!
At the weigh-in I walked with the scales and it seemed that most had struggled to pass the ton mark. I estimated 120lb in my nets and thought it would be tight between myself, Paul Kell and John Pantry. Nick had a reasonable day with around 95lb beating everyone from 9 through to 24. My nets went to 120lb odd but crafty Mr Kell pipped me to the post with his margin fish and put 131lb on the scales.
So, I had to settle for 2nd on the day, £70 in the bank and 6th overall in the league which wasn’t bad after the few rubbish early draws I suffered. So congratulations to the top 5 Mark Smith, John Robinson, John Pantry, Paul Lamb and Nick Gilbert - overall league places are below and I would like to send special thanks to our sponsors GOT Baits who supplied enough prizes for the winners to take a carrier bag of bait home and every other angler getting a freebee. Now it is time for me to focus on the teams of 4 league at Hartleylands and a few opens and qualifying matches for the Fish to Win competition.
1. Mark Smith 87
2. John Robinson 84
3. John Pantry 81
4. Paul Lamb 76
5. Nick Gilbert 74
6. Matt Love 73
7. Paul Taylor 73
8. Ian Carley 71
9. Mark Hathway 68
10. Jeff Driscoll 62
11. Russell Graves 55
12. Colin Wood 55
13. Richard Hall 51
14. Jonny Watt 49
15. Paul Kell 49
16. Kevin Pack 46
17. Mark Nevins 38
18. Stephen Lovell 24
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