Sedges, Brick Lake, 08 June (16 pegs)

With 16 fishing today and everybody in the pools it was a simple matter of taking out 2 pegs on each side, that was until all the would-be match organisers decided to have their say, so after much deliberation, 2 & 3 were left out on the bank shared with Tile and 13 & 19 on the opposite bank.

Personally I would have taken peg 1 out (and 20) as these pegs had no wind but a certain person was ADAMant that peg 1 was full of carp, so much so that he was happy to be given the peg. 

I was tempted to let him have it but I didn't and Alan Healey drew it instead!

He probably won't be running to it next time around!

Anyway, we had a practice draw before the main event and I drew out a couple of iffy pegs and then left it as I didn't want to jinx my chances in the proper draw.

And that proved to be a wise move as the last ping-pong ball in the bucket was peg 11 which is the top right corner and the wind was blowing up there.

Brian Shanks drew 10, the opposite corner which usually wins when there is a tidy angler on it and for company I had Chris Gay on 12 which was a repeat of last week but hopefully the result would not be quite so unfortunate ... It wasn't!

Setting up never took long, a shallow rig for 8mm pellet which never got wet and a rig for 14m along into the corner which was about 4' deep to fish meat over 5mm pellet.

Finally, the wag rod was untangled and set up for 8mm pellet at about 12 inches deep.

On the "all in" I fed the corner with a cup of pellet and meat, fired out a pouch of 8mm's and slung the wag out.

By this time Brian was playing his first fish and I was beginning to worry that I was going to get my backside spanked again by the Westerleigh Slapper when the rod was nearly ripped from between my knees.

Needless to say I never saw that fish but the next fish wasn't long in coming.

By casting about two thirds of the way across and letting the float drift into a small gap in the reeds I was getting some really confident bites and after an hour and a half I was quite a bit ahead of Brian who was struggling a bit on the pole but he dug out a waggler rod and caught on that straight away casting around the tree that overhangs peg 10.

By midway the fish in my peg started to get a bit cagey and I was having to cast a bit further along the bank and out into the open water to keep the bites coming. Brian meanwhile had abandoned the wag rod and was back on the pole and getting a few fish from in the corner of his peg and to my left, Chris Gay was catching in close and made sure everyone knew it by wandering up and down the bank with "weighers".

Just before the last hour we had a downpour and the wind dropped for a short while and after that I struggled.

I had a look down the edge with the meat rig which resulted in a foulhooker that came off and not much else.

In hindsight I could have tried the shallow rig down the edge but it was of little consequence as my 20 or so carp went 134lbs exactly which was good enough for 1st although Brian was only 1 fish away from that with 125-8 so it was close.

Chris Gay made the best of the empty peg next to him and weighed in 83-12 for third place catching mainly on worm over groundbait close in.

I forgot to ask him if he caught on a single worm or a specific number of pieces of worm ... I'm sure he will put me right!

And fourth was Pete Uzzell with 57-2 from peg 6. His weight was boosted quite a bit with a fish that went just over 22lbs which he hooked minutes before the end of the match and it was just starting to get dark by the time he landed it but at least it gave his new pole a good workout and the section money he won should go some way towards paying for it!

[I'm pretty sure that Matt Williams has been sent the picture by now]

The silvers fished really well today by Psv standards and made up 1/4 of the total weighed in.

Rocket Ron Hardiman took the honours from peg 4 with 35-12 of good quality skimmers caught on 8mm meat fished at 6m.

Second was Matt Taynton on peg 18 with 24-8 caught on double caster at 14m

And Keith Ray managed 21-12 of skimmers from peg 8.

Section winners were Pete Uzzell by default and Mark Radford by lots of defaults!

Full Result:

1. Steve Burgess (11) ....... 134-0 (no silvers)
2. Brian Shanks (10) ............ 125-8
3. Chris Gay** (12) ............. 83-12
4. Pete Uzzell (6) ................ 57-2
5. Matt Taynton (18) ............ 48-5
6. Ron Hardiman (4) ............ 44-12
7. Mark Radford (16) ........... 40-12
8. Darren North (15) ........... 32-4
9. Mike Welling (9) .............. 27-8
10. Adam Caswell (7) ............ 26-10
11. Lee Waller (5) ................ 25-11
12. Keith Ray (8) .................. 21-12
13. Alan Healey (1) ............... 18-11
14. Ryan Radford* (17) ......... 17-12
15. John Bradford (20) .......... 8-8
16. Steve O Toole (14) .......... dnw

*golden peg

**silver peg

Silvers:

1. Rocket Ron Hardiman (4) ... 35-12
2. Matt Taynton (18) ....... 24-8
3. Keith Ray (8) ............. 21-12
4. Lee Waller (5) ........... 19-4
5. Pete Uzzell (6) .......... 15-9
6. Mike Welling (9) ........ 12-8
7. Chris Gay (12) .......... 12-0
8. John Bradford (20) .... 8-8
9. Darren North (15) ..... 7-4
10. Alan Healey (1) ........ 7-3
11. Adam Caswell (7) ..... 7-2
12. Ryan Radford (17) .... 6-4
13. Brian Shanks (10) ..... 2-4
14. Mark Radford (16) .... 2-0

Next week is on Campbell at Viaduct and I wont be there so please let me know by Friday if you can't make it so that I can give the fishery an idea of numbers and book a time slot that isn't going to upset anybody.

There are a couple of spaces left for this one.

This also means that your next update will be brought to you by the very talented and marginally less sarcastic Chris Szakacs.