This was the final round of this friendly league and was being fished at Newbridge, Rich Lacey and myself had an 8 point lead going into this final round. However, after losing a 6 point lead last year to come second we were definitely not counting our chickens! Our nearest rivals Ivan Currie and Dave Lewis only went and drew out two great pegs, Ivan end peg (again) below the Norfolk Reeds and Dave behind the pumphouse. Unfortunately we got poor pegs and knew we were up against it. I was going to the end of the straight peg 40 where 6lb has been a very good weight, I couldn’t see me beating Dave, Derek below Dave and Graham Hunt on peg 46. 6 or 7 points was my target and same for Rich we thought.
The river was very clear and you could easily see 3 feet or more down, lots more rain needed. You can see my net and a shelf under the water here
Setting up I was going to cover my options and fish a bit lighter than normal. Three pole rigs, one pencil float 1.5g with 20 N10 to 0.08, a 2 g float with 20 to 0.09, a rig to fish chopped worm at 5m. A gbait feeder with 16 to 0.13 and a waggler with 18 N10 to 0.10. I didn’t put up a topper or bolly as there was hardly any flow and the wind was blowing everywhere.
We started at 10 and I put 8 balls of gbait in at 11.5m then started on the feeder with three red maggots on the hook. I had instant bites from small fish and had 2 roach a perch and a chublet. There were clearly no bream here at the moment so I went onto the pole as it would be easier to catch roach on it than the feeder. I did get a small roach first drop in on single caster, but was soon onto a maggot which got a couple more small roach, but I was soon onto the pencil float. Bites were hard to come by, the fish were not lined up on the gbait and I had to search the area to get a small roach or perch, red or fluro maggot was best.
After an hour the pole line died, so I fed some chopped worm at 5m and tried the feeder again. I had a couple more roach and a 6oz perch but then couldn’t get a bite. The chopped worm line gave me 3 small perch so not great.
Rich rang me to say he was struggling with maybe 1lb and wasn’t getting bites, but not long after he had a bonus 2 1/2lb perch on the feeder dead handy!
The pole was still dead for me so my only choice was to try the waggler where I had been feeding maggots across. Started with double maggot but missed three bites, so changed to single and caught the culprit a bleak. Kev Boltz had walked up my section and said other than Dave, Derek and Graham it was a real struggle, Jerry Pocock below me hadn’t had a bite on the pole but was getting odd fish on the feeder including a pound chub. I stuck on the waggler as the bleak were a decent size but it wasn’t frantic. With just over an hour to go the bleak dried up, and I couldn’t get a bite anywhere. I recalled the pole, didn’t work, had a 1oz perch on the tip and 3 or 4 bleak late on. Maybe 5lbs but would it be enough?
Below is my section board, I weighed 6lb 2oz for 7 points, getting beat by the three form pegs. No bream had fed so that had helped I guess. Dave Lewis won the match with 11lb 8oz from behind the pumphouse. Dave had this peg last week in the Commercial House would you believe, but a hole in his net then cost him. He got a second chance and put it right with some roach and small chub.
In Rich’s section Ivan comfortably won the section, but Rich had a late run of fish on the pole to get him second in the section. We had 16 points and knew then we had won the league.
Fair play to Ivan and Dave coming first and second today for the maximum 20 points. Runners up in the league.
Here’s the overall result, we had 101 points out of a possible 120.
Top of the league and currently Rovers are also top of the table, so a pair of very happy Gasheads here. Commercial House next week, same bits of river as last time. I’d prefer Swineford or Crane, mainly to get away from the boats, rowers, swimmers etc 🙈🤣🙈
Lastly big thanks to Dean Harvey and Craig Pinker for running the series and swim clearing. Also Derek Coles and Jeff Surmon put in a lot of work. Cheers lads 🍻 UTG
Cracking write up Tim, enjoyed reading that one ,and well done 👍
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