Psv v Frys, Shiplate Farm, all lakes (24 pegs)

This was our third and final inter-club for the year with Frys at Shiplate.
I'm not sure of the overall result of the first match back in July, I never got round to working it out (so that must have been a win for us).
The match in September was a draw so there was a lot of pride at stake today.
Unfortunately we were at a big disadvantage from the start as I had a few cancellations ....
Ryan Radford was out due to an England Under 21's trial (football, not fishing), which also meant dad, Mark, wouldn't be fishing or Uncle Adam either.
Aaron Britnell was also booked in but I was kind of expecting a "no show" as he's about as reliable as a pva condom and I received a Sunday morning text from the Bromley Heath drunk tank which counted Chris Gay out.
The upshot of that was that we had just 8 fishing against 16 of Frys big guns and local "ringers".
Unusually the pegging / draw was incident free with three sections consisting of 7 on Westpool, 8 on Hawthorns and 9 on the main lake giving everybody an empty peg either side.  Payout was 1st and 2nd overall with 3 section payouts and a Silvers payout in each section.
I usually have the last peg in the bucket but Dean Malin insisted and I wasn't going to argue so I took the second-last peg which was 9 (or 9a) and Dean was left with peg 1 on the main lake (how do they do it)!
As it happened the match fished really well with lots of close weights and, despite the unfavourable weather, everybody caught.
As expected, the top weights came from the main lake and no surprises then that the winner was Dean Malin with 73lbs 4oz.  Dean caught early on the method feeder to the island but caught most of his weight at 5/6m on corn and maggot (I think)!
Second was Brian Shanks on Main Lake 7 with 69-2 caught on corn down the edge.
Third place went to Andy Hembrow on Main Lake 13 with 61-10.
Silvers went to Ray Cooper with 21-3 from Main Lake 5.
And the all-important overall result went to Frys with 143 pts against 89 (after dropping their 8 worst results)!


Overall Result:

Sections:

Silvers:

As for myself, as mentioned earlier, I drew peg 9 , or 9a on the Main 

Lake (I even had a choice of pegs) and I was quite happy to find I had what must have been the most sheltered peg in the South West today which was a bit of good news considering the harsh weather we were expecting!

I was told by Dean and owner Steve to fish into the inlet channel to the left so I set up a lead rod with a banded 8mm for that and also to fish down the right margin with corn so I set up a rig for there and another for 13m straight out into open water.

Starting on the tip I didn't have to wait long for my first fish which was about 3lbs.  The next one was a lot bigger but came off and a few more followed but it wasn't hectic and I was getting a few liners and odd foulers which had me thinking the fish were coming up for the pellets as I was struggling to catapult them out in the wind.

I had a look on the 13m line but this was only good for small skimmers and a couple of small carp, one of which was hooked in the dorsal, which again had me thinking they were up in the water.

A look in the margin produced a 2lb skimmer and nothing else until 15 minutes from the end when I managed to sneak out my best fish of the day so I spent most of the match on the lead to end up with 47-10 which got me halfway in the section and 11th overall which wasn't too disapointing.

I did have to give Pete Sivell a pound as he beat me by 4oz but he should have beaten me by a lot more from peg 15 but I wasn't too worried as Alan Healy and Jason Bird's coins covered that slip-up.

Thinking about it I think I would have caught well on the waggler, shallow as I had the wind off my back and it would have been easy to fish but never mind!

Important Update!

Please note that for the foreseeable future the venue for our monthly meetings and the Christmas festivities has been changed to The Horseshoe at Siston Common. I hope this doesn't cause a problem for anyone but the Midland Spinner has had some "reliability problems" of late and the manager at The Horseshoe has assured me we will be well looked after so I'm happy with that.

(And it's within falling distance from my front door)!

If anyone has a problem with this please let me know.

Last Sundays match was scheduled for Landsend Match Lake but due to low numbers Mike thought it would be better to have it on the Speci Lake as he reckoned the Match Lake would fish crap with too much space for the fish to hide in.

As far as I'm concerned nobody knows a fishery better than it's owner so I was happy to go along with that, especially as I wasn't fishing it anyway.

I haven't seen the full result as yet but it was a repeat of the previous result at Harescombe with Chris (corner peg) Szakacs taking top honours from peg 33 with 127lbs ish and Lionel Legge taking second with 80ish from peg 31.

Thanks to Simon Belcham for reprising his role as match organiser for the day although I suspect he secretly enjoyed it.

I will put the results up as soon as I get them back.

And finally for those who are missing Roy Garland's weekly fishing page in the Evening Post (apparently the powers-that-be decided there wasn't enough space in the paper or enough demand for it), Roy has created a new website.

The address for it is http://www.anglingpress.co.uk

And even more finally some of you may be wondering why I wasn't fishing Sunday so wonder no more!

I managed to invite myself to an end of series match at Rolfs Lake in Oxford.

As a first timer at the venue I was the butt of much abuse (nothing new there) and was expecting to be going home with my tail between my legs and my pole in a million pieces but it didn't quote turn out as bad as that as I drew peg 2 ( a corner as peg 3 is redundant) and with all my elastics tightened up enough to play tunes on them I managed 9 carp for 86-ish and even managed to pick up second in my section albeit by default.

My last fish swam behind the keepnets and after a bit of comedy I managed to thread the topkit behind and it was still on but despite much pulling I couldn't get it's head up and the hook pulled out which was a shame as it was well over 20lbs and would have won me the section and got me 3rd but I guess nobody ever won anything with lost fish and if that was the case Adam Caswell would win every Psv match!

Harescombe Match Lake, 13 October (18 pegs)

Last week's "match" was on Wildmarsh (Trinity Waters) but the turnout was a tad disappointing with only 8 fishing, which was a shame as it is a good venue but it's not easy fishing which probably put a few off.
I couldn't make it myself as I was away for the weekend in Krakow but the match was run very professionally in my absence as can be seen from the "weigh-sheet" below!

I've only mentioned it as Matt Taynton (sixpack) won the match and with it the £100 golden peg with 48-7 from peg 23 and that included the top silvers weight of 32-8 so well done that man (and his worms).

Anyhow, this was our third trip up the M5 to Harescombe.  The last time we were up there was back in early September which I missed due to being away on holiday but the match was won by Andy Curry with 81-8 from peg 3 and the back up weights were close with only 15lbs or so separating the top 6 anglers.
Bearing in mind that fish over a pound are a bonus that's a lot of fish and as you can see from the results below there was no particular area that was more productive which was the intention when the lake was dug a few years back.
Plenty of bites all year round and no features to hold the fish, although that has changed a bit since the landslip that filled in pegs 26 to 30 which has created two end pegs but the owners have re-jigged the pegs on either end of the lake to compensate for this.

Our first visit up there was back in February which was memorable for two reasons, firstly that it was won by myself and it was the worst weather conditions I have ever fished in which is probably the biggest drawback as the lake is very exposed, perched halfway up a hill, in a wind and rain tunnel.
(see here for the highlights of that particular match)
Which brings me round to today's match as although I had been informed in the week by our resident meteorologist, Chris Gay that we were going to have a dry day with little wind it turned out to be quite horrendous, extremely wet and windy but luckily the fish weren't put off by it.
Winner on the day was Chris Szakacs (and another golden peg win) with 75-12 from peg 2.
Chris caught on corn and soft pellet over caster and micro but it was very close as around the other side of the lake, Lionel Legge (steeplejack??) on peg 21 weighed in 74-9, losing out by 1 or 2 fish.
Lionel caught mainly on dead maggot fished shallow.
Third was Andy Curry with 70-4 from end peg 29 followed by Jason Bird with 62-2 from the other end peg 23.
It's worth mentioning though that there was a bit of a cock-up with the draw which meant there was an extra peg in the bag and as a result peg 24 wasn't drawn giving young Jason three pegs to himself (kind of) so he could have, and should have, done a lot better!
I won't bore you with a blow by blow account of my match as it didn't really go all that well and worse still I ended up adding to the pound coin collections of Pete Sivell, Jason Bird and Alan Healey but by way of a small consolation  I managed to  pick one up from my neighbour for the day, Derek Lucas and would have had another from my other neighbour, Chris Gay if I had have taken up his offer at the start of the match.
Entertainment today was provided by Kev Jefferies and Chris Gay.
For some strange reason Kev's topkit gave up the ghost on a small F1 and ended up in four pieces like a comedy magician's wand while his travelling partner Chris had his 14m butt section collapse on him presumably under the weight of the rain on his pole, the joys of buying second-hand Maver from eBay no doubt, but on the plus side "Rixons Repairs" should be busy this week!

Full Result:

And finally this week, a spot the difference competition (with thanks to Rich Jones for the inspired bit of photography)