Another trip up the wrong direction of the M5 this week to Psv's favourite "hole-in-the-ground", Staunton Court.
For those who are unfamiliar with this venue, it's situated at the back of a small industrial estate a few miles past Gloucester on the A417 heading towards Ledbury. It's not the most picturesque of venues, with one bank backing onto a row of units which restricts shipping back a pole, especially when someone turns up in a lorry and gets the jetwasher out. And when the brick-cutting unit is on overtime it can get a bit noisy. However, the saving grace is that the lake holds a large head of carp into double figures and plenty of silvers and is currently home to the Psv match record of 314lbs held by Craig (Trigger) Edmunds.
As is now the norm breakfast was at the Watersmeet Hotel which is handy as it's just down the road and is as good a breakfast as you'll ever get for seven quid and even those with the healthiest of appetites would probably struggle to finish it all. And an added bonus is that the waitress service is top quality!
Anyway, enough of that and apparently the match on the Saturday (and the ones in the week) had fished well for the time of year and the Saturday match had been won with over eighty pounds so with an overnight frost and bright sunshine added to the mix the prospects for our match were looking, shall we say, interesting.
Pegging, thanks to Will Dearlove who doesn't do breakfast and therefore missed out on the waitress's delightful rear, was 1 > 6 on the concrete, 7 & 8 on the far end bank, 9 > 14 on the grass bank (peg 14 being the famous "bin peg") and the last peg being on the near end bank (a peg that normally would win in winter but didn't today). There wasn't any more room on this bank as someone had kindly parked a 10 ton excavator in the middle of the path!
Fortunately for Alan Healy on peg 15 (the one that normally wins in winter but didn't today) the owner of the digger decided to take it for a spin behind his peg while we were setting up .... there was a lot of sympathy for Alan at this point!
The match itself was fairly uneventful with most of the action concentrated around the higher-numbered pegs and the early pegs on the concrete, the further away from these areas the harder it got (no awards for guessing where I was).
Top honours went to club comedian, Darren North in the bin peg with three carp plus silvers for 31lbs exactly.
Darren (pictured below) fished mainly at 14m with maggot over pellet and various other things.
Close second (but probably should have won), with a similar net of 3 carp plus silvers was Alan Healy with 29-9 but, as always, controversy surrounded this result as Alan managed to get one of his carp in his silvers net which may mean his weight could be disqualified pending a steward's enquiry.
Will Dearlove on peg 3 took the 3rd spot with 29lbs of carp caught on corn along with silvers taken on maggot.
And Simon Belcham rounded off the top 4 with 26-11 from peg 13.
Top silvers on the day went to Matt Taynton on his first visit to Staunton with an impressive 21-6 of decent skimmers caught on caster from peg 12.
Full Result:
- Darren North (peg 14) ....... 31-0
- Alan (should've won) Healy (15) .... 29-9
- Will Dearlove (3) .......... 29-0
- Simon Belcham (13) .... 26-11
- Matt Taynton (12) ......... 25-12
- Rich Jones (11) ............ 20-7
- Ryan Radford (2) ......... 17-13
- Derek Lucas (1) ............ 15-14
- Steve Burgess (8) ......... 12-14
- Rich Britton* (6) ............ 11-0
- Mark Radford (10) ......... 8-4
- Stevie Wynne (9) .......... 7-1
- Chris Szakacs (4) ......... dnw
- Mike Smith (5) ............... dnw
- Adam Caswell (7) ........ blank
*golden peg
Silvers:
- Matt Taynton ..... 21-6
- Rich Britton ....... 11-0
- Simon Belcham ... 10-3
- Derek Lucas ...... 9-6
- Darren North ...... 6-4
- Will Dearlove ..... 5-8
- Steve Burgess ... 4-8
- Ryan Radford .... 3-3
- Rich Jones ......... 2-11
- Mark Radford ..... 1-10
- Stevie Wynne .... 1-1
Next week we're on Wildmarsh at Trinity which is a first for Psv and it looks like being a bit of a cold one so best remind Adam Caswell and Mike Smith to bring plenty of paste with them seeing as it was so successful this week!
Did we not tell Adam to use maggot ? Im sure i heard some light hearted offers being cascaded his way throughout the match..
ReplyDeleteYes, quite correct but he was ADAMant he didn't want any and he'd rather blank than catch silvers. Which he did. He caved in eventually and had some of mine then hooked a carp which snapped him, another easy pound for me, happy days :-)
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