Harescombe, 22 November (13 pegs)

After a spell of damp and mild weather winter made it's first proper appearance with Saturday being bitterly cold and windy with it.
I spent a couple of hours on Saturday up a ladder playing around with the x brother-in-law's roof which wasn't a very pleasant experience.
Fortunately the wind died away overnight but it was still cold and I had to sort the windscreen of the fishing bus with a credit card (it's only use these days).
Despite the frost the log burner at Harescombe's cafe wasn't put to use but the breakfast was good, I had a "Pricey"
I don't know if they do a "Half Pricey" especially for Mike Nicholls, could be a winner!
 

Alan Healey was in charge of proceedings and with thirteen fishing it was pretty much every other peg and paying out top 5 overall so plenty to go at.

I drew 13 with Alan on 11 and Lee Waller in the corner on  15 (or 16)
The hot pegs, either side of the landslip, were occupied by Rich Jones on 24 and Steve Sewell on 29.
Most were expecting a few fish to be caught today as the f1's that are the main target here apparently feed all year round regardless of the weather but I wasn't so sure about that as the sudden drop in temperature was sure to knock the weights back a bit.
And it was a psv match after all (sorry Lee)

Nonetheless I was quite happy with my peg as the far bank wooden posts in front of me had collapsed and given me a bit of a feature to fish to and it seemed that the shelf had given way as well as I had a depth of 4ft tight across which seemed a good thing until Steve o' Toole came round and said he'd won a recent match from the same peg and never caught anything across and caught all his fish by his feet in the shallow water.
I set up a rig to fish either side of the collapsed bank with maggot over micros and that rig also suited a couple of lines at topkit plus one.
I also had a rig set up for tight across further along the bank which again suited the inside margins (although I wasn't expecting to catch much from them and didn't) and another rig, same depth, but for banded pellet as Chris Fox had done well on it recently (I didnt so he must have been fibbing)!

With 9 different lines on the go I missed the all-in unsurprisingly but it made little difference as the match was a slow starter and after about 5 minutes I was the first person I could see catch anything, a 10oz gudgeon from across on maggot followed by a chublet but that was a false dawn as not much followed.
Elsewhere Steve Wynne over the other side on 19 was getting odd fish on other people's bait (he'd left all his at home) and Rich Jones was catching, not much else was happening and even Brian Shanks on 21 was struggling and was getting "chip-shopped" by Steve and Rich either side of him.
Alan was getting nowhere and Lee had only caught "eyes" fishing 16m across to the end of the island.
He then came in short and had a "run" of 2 or 3 f1's before that went dead.
But I pulled that back with a proper carp across (all 1lb of it) and a skimmer and another similar sized carp from my short lines

It was hard work and by mid-way through the match Mark Radford was complaining about hypothermia and a lack of fish, Lee was just moaning in general and both Steve o' Toole and Lionel Legge were wandering around aimlessly.
 

Meanwhile Brian had finally got his mojo back and was catching and Alan was staging a big comeback accompanied by a lot of coughing and splashing etc just to let me know our pound side bet wasn't going to be a foregone conclusion and to add insult to injury I hooked up in the far bank foliage and broke the tip off my best float.

In my panic to avoid losing a pound I decided to heap some feed in on my short lines which Alan found highly amusing.
He went a bit quiet though when I had 3 f1's from there straight away and in the last hour, by which time the Radfords were heading down the M5, I had a few more from across with my newly adapted f1 float, not enough to trouble the front runners but enough to keep my pound safe.

The match was won by Steve Sewell from 29 with 31-0
Steve caught alternating between maggot and soft pellet fishing to the pipe thing that sticks out of the water at about 14m.
Rich Jones was 2nd with 26-10 caught mostly on caster short.

Full Result:

1. Steve Sewell (29).... 31-0
2. Rich Jones (21) .......... 26-10
3. Chris Szakacs (30) ..... 24-12
4. Steve o'Toole (3) ......... 23-10
5. Steve Wynne (19) ........ 19-2
6. Brian Shanks (21) ........ 17-0
7. Steve Burgess (13) ...... 16-4
8. Rocket Ron (6) ............ 13-2
9. Alan Healey (11) .......... 10-6
and 4 dnw's

So a close result which is always good although the weights were well down on the norm but it was cold and it was a psv match so no surprises there then!