Thursday 17/03/2011 - Bathampton AA Silvers Championship - Huntstrete - Final Round Seven - Bridge Pool

St Patrick’s Day saw Harry Muir do an Irish jig and present a card to our good friend Andy Shield on his 53rd Birthday ( Andy pictured right reading good wishes!).

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 16. I was delighted with this as I have many fond memories of this peg. On peg 17 I had Martin Alexander and peg 15 the mad Irish man Harry Muir for company.

I set up the usual two rigs – 1 x 4x16 Jolly and a 1 x Ronnie rig. I started by pot feeding four big balls of GB at 7 metres and first put in had a Skimmer on the drop which came off shipping back – happy days – not. It took 15 minutes before I had a 4 oz Skimmer in the net. Looking around the fishing appeared to be slow. I concluded that the Skimmers weren’t going to feed as they are usually first on parade. So after an hour and four small Skimmers in the net it was time for the Ronnie rig with caster hook bait over caster. First cast I had an indication following this I had a run of Ronnie’s up to 6oz. However, I soon realised that the fish were up in the water so took 2 foot off the depth and started to catch a lot quicker. With two hours to go the swim died so switched to the maggot and kept the Ronnie’s coming albeit them being a lot smaller. Unconsciously I kept putting a caster on the hook instead of a maggot and didn’t realise until I didn’t get a bites – I don’t often fish maggot for Ronnie’s! I weighed 16lb which was enough for a match win.

I was fishing for third place in the knockout with Rich Coles and managed to double his weight. However, the Knock out was won by Bill Ferris (pictured right with runner up Bob Price) with 14lb to Bob’s 4lb.

Paul Barnfield and I (both pictured right) were leading the pairs at the start of the match which we maintain by weighing in a total weight of 25lb, giving us an overall points tally of 62. Runners up were Rich Coles and Harry Muir with 52.

The overall league was a close affair on the day between the top two with Paul Barnfield just keeping the lead he held all series from Paul Staite (both pictured right), but by just one point. With the win today I managed to sneak up the league table and finish 3rd overall.

1. Paul Barnfield 74

2. Paul Staite 73
3. Mike Nicholls 66
4. Mike Jones 60
5. Rich Coles 50
6. Bill Ferris 36

Full Result on the day:

1. Mike Nicholls 16-0-0 peg 16
2. Bill Ferris 14-04-0 peg 24
3. Pete Phillips 13-02-0 peg 26
4. Mike Jones 10-11-0 peg 30
5. Paul Staite 10-09-0 peg 31
6. Harry Muir 9-04-0 peg 15

No Carp weighed.

Many thanks for a great series goes to Bathampton AA, Mike Jones and Veals Tackle for providing many tackle vouchers.