Harescombe Match Lake, 30 March (17 pegs)

Over the course of the last few months I have gotten into the habit of paying for my morning paper with ten pound notes (whenever I can), the reason being so that I have plenty of £ coins to hand out on Sundays.

But I have now found myself in a bit of a predicament as there is nowhere left in the fishing bus to store them all.

Anyway, (more on that later) with 17 fishing today I entrusted fishery manager Andy with the pegging which gave everyone an empty peg to one side and with the weather forecast to be warm and sunny with a bit of breeze, conditions were ideal.

Payout today was to be top 3 plus 3 sections, 2 sections of 6 and 1 with 5 in!

No silvers pool as here the silvers go in the same net as the mini F1's and the bigger fish go in a separate net.

I made sure I had the last peg and for the second week running was left with peg 1 which is a corner with plenty of options and not much to complain about.

For company I had Rich Jones in 29 which used to be a corner but is now a secluded bay since part of the hillside became a major feature of the lake.

And Mark Radford in 3. The rest of my section was made up of Steve O Toole, Darren North and another new signing, Andy Gay (no relation to Chris).

I set three rigs up. A shallow rig for across to the island with a banded 6mm, a rig for the bottom of the far ledge and a rig for the margins.

I would have set up a couple more but the rabble were getting a bit restless by 10:07 so I shouted the "all-in" before I had my nets in and let them get on with it.

It was soon apparent there were plenty of fish up this end as both Rich, Mark and myself all caught well from the off.

Rich looked to be doing the best partly due to the 5 minute head-start and his being super-organised and having 3 pole rollers set up.

After feeding some wetted micros and meat in various places and pinging some 4mm's over to the island  I started on the shallow rig with a banded 6mm over towards the corner of the island at 14m and caught straight away.

I was having a bit of a mare to begin with as with my 1-roller setup I was having to break my pole down twice to ship back up the slope behind but after a couple of adjustments I got it reasonably sorted though it still wasn't quite right.

Rich jones meanwhile was catching anywhere he could get his bait in the water and Mark (pictured below) was fishing tight over with soft pellet and doing his best to try to convince me and anyone else who could be bothered to listen that he was being battered by the two of us but it can be a bit tricky to hide what you're catching from someone sat next to you.

I had a bit of a quiet spell mid-match when the fish seemed to back off and a look on my other lines kept a few fish coming until they returned with a spot towards the left edge at 14m producing a few better fish by lifting and dropping small pices of meat on the deck but I was having to wait too long for bites for it to be worthwhile and I was soon back out on the shallow rig by which time the fish had returned.

The last hour was quite frantic for all three of us and I was getting bites non stop but the fish were snatching at the pellet and I was getting foul-hookers and pulling out of a lot.

Being tucked out of the way up this end, and with no Adam Caswell to provide a running commentary, I couldn't really see what was going on around the lake but it seemed that other than the three of us, and also Lee Waller and Brian Shanks on the far end pegs (15 & 16), nobody else was setting the place alight and that's how it finished up with Mark lying his way into first place with 71-0, Brian second with 61-13 caught mainly on corn down the edge (I think), and Lee 3rd with 60-13 caught on (not too sure)

I managed to scrape the default section money (and 4th overall) with 59-9 beating Rich by just 5oz so that last fish netted on the all-out made all the difference for me,

Jason Bird won the middle section, which also had Brian & Lee in, with 27-7 from peg 9 and in-form Ryan Radford won the small section with 39-5 from peg 21, earning Uncle Adam Caswell a small bonus as Adam had paid for him to go in the pools this week which, according to Mark, was a good move as it gives Adam a better chance of picking up money!

Although there was no official Silvers pool today, the unofficial silvers was won by Simon Belcham with 6-10 caught on his leftover maggots from the Westerleigh Winter Series.

It's a little known fact that Simon was a member of the team that won the National Mortgage Lenders Angling Association fishing competition not once, but twice ... not a lot of people know that!

Full Result:

1. Mark Radford (peg 3) ..... 71-0
2. Brian Shanks (16) ......... 61-13
3. Lee Waller (15) ............. 60-13
4. Steve Burgess (1) .......... 59-9
5. Rich Jones (29) .............. 59-4
6. Ryan Radford (21) ......... 39-5
7. Steve O Toole (4) .......... 37-2
8. Alan Healey (19) ............ 29-4
9. Matt Challenger (22) ....... 28-6
10. Jason Bird* (9) .............. 27-11
11. Ron Hardiman (10) ........ 20-10
12. Andy Curry (13) ............ 16-2
13. Simon Belcham** (12) ... 15-10
14. Darren North (6) ........... 9-7
15. and 2 DNW's (including Pete Sivell again)

*golden peg 

**silver peg

And finally, going back to what I mentioned earlier about my pound coin predicament, well it wasn't made any easier today by Allan Healey, Pete Sivell, Jason  Bird or Andy Curry and so if they don't start trying a bit harder I'm going to have to find a bigger coin pot in the van,

Fortunately for the aforementioned, I didn't go on about it too much ... Or did I?

No match next Sunday (I'm away for the weekend and didn't want to loose any league points) but there is a meeting on Tuesday night at The Horseshoe where I will be taking bookings for our next matches which are ,,,
Avalon on 13 April
Campbell on 20 April (Easter weekend)
Sedges (Tile) 27 April 
and Hillview 04 May