Thursday 03/03/2011 - Bathampton AA Silvers Championship - Huntstrete - Round Five - Bridge Pool

Firstly, bad news for Steve Jefferies, apparently he shouldn’t have picked up for second default in the Silvers in yesterday’s Carps AC match that should have been Bill Ferris. Some financial adjustment needed I think.

Credit where credit is due and I know I have said this before but here goes again, Mike Jones is running a great series – he has a very professional approach and looking forward to the Coffin Dodgers starting in March, which looks like a sell out already. (I hope that’s enough consolation for beating him in the knock out today).

This winter seems to be longer than any I can remember, 1 degree leaving home and 3 degrees travelling home add the NE wind chill and we were all bloody freezing. Nonetheless, it was a good turn out (see pictured right some of the anglers setting up) – except where was my pair’s partner? Apparently Paul Barnfield has just landed himself a job as a Ranger with Bristol Water – congratulations’ matey, will we see Paul again?

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 28 (North facing), reasonably happy with this, but would have preferred an end peg with plenty of room. I had Rich Coles on peg 27 and Paul Haines on peg 29 for company. I wasn’t sure how it was going to fish so I decided to fish as far out as the light conditions would allow, which was 11.5metres. Two rigs 1 – 4x16 Jolly for the long line and a Ronnie rig for close in which proved to be optimistic. On the whistle I fed three balls of my Skimmer GB but without any particles added. I feed a bit of hemp seed on the short line – waste of money!! I started on double dead red and had a bite first put in the fish was so small the elastic gave him its freedom. After a longish wait I swapped to a single wriggly red and had a 1lb Skimmer – that’s better. The upshot was the fishing was extremely hard and I had the odd Skimmer on maggot throughout, re-feeding at half time, adding fifty Pinkies or so (no Mr Jones I didn’t count them) and with two hours to go I latched in to a Tench which really helped me on the day weighing 3lb 7oz (picture right with a very cold angler) which earned me a £15 voucher. As I didn’t think I had broken in to double figures I was well pleased with my 12lb 10oz and second overall.

The match was won by Paul Staite (pictured right with his all Skimmer catch) from end peg 32 with 15lb 15oz. Paul caught all his fish on expander pellet.

With only one Carp caught the entire Carp pool went to Harry Muir (pictured bottom right unhooking his one and only Carp). It weighed in at 6lb 11oz.

Full Result:

1. Paul Staite 15-15-0 peg 32

2. Mike Nicholls 12-10-0 peg 27

3. Mike Jones 11-10-0 peg 24

4. Harry Muir 9-05-0 peg 7

5. Ray Bazeley 7-07-0 peg 16

6. Rich Coles 6-14-0 peg 26

Top Carp:

1. Harry Muir 6-11-0 peg 7