Saturday 11/06/2011 - Hillview Open

After a visit to Hillview and whilst having a pinky ponk with Bela in my garage I had a very upsetting call from Tony Rixon who advised me that Eddie Perkins had passed away an hour earlier after a long illness. I have known Eddie all my fishing life and we sparred many a time on and off the bank. Eddie always got the better of me off the bank with his extremely sharp wit – dam it. He didn’t always get his way on the bank however, but when he did he always explained how he fished which usually left me guessing. I will miss you. What I must say is that if we had the Health and Safety in place in Eddie’s prime as they do today he would still be with us….Rest in peace mate.

As Dad always told me - "life continues". So back to today’s fishing. Keith was away today with his skittle team so the breakfast wasn’t quite as good – well quite as much! However, the organisation was a bit up market with Neville Groves standing in, he even sorted the payout in to envelopes before the draw as the pictures right proves (whilst the Cat's away....).

With another good turn out both lakes and the first canal was in the draw woolly hat. Having rubbed against Terry King and pulled peg 36 on Heron whilst Bela drew peg 52 on the canal. I fancied mine but not Bela’s.

The last time I drew this peg I just managed to scrape in second overall, so I decided to fish it the same, soft pellet over micro at 5 metres then in to the margins with paste. However, it didn’t quite work out that way today. I started on the 4x14 boy jolly and during the first hour I had a run of the new f1’s (which apparently have been conspicuous by their absence). They soon switched off so I converted the line to 8mm meat (some I had left over from Thursday’s match which wasn’t smelling wonderful and had gone white). I started to catch some good Skimmers with the odd small Carp. Up to now I had been kinder potting but decide to feed a big pot full whilst I changed to the LH margin with paste where I had been loose feeding micro. I had one Tench, one Skimmer and three f1’s one’s. The big Carp didn’t make appearance. So I finished the match on the meat at 5 metres. I weighed 19lb 6oz of Carp and my “Silvers” weighed in at 40lb for a total of 59lb 6oz. This left me 9th overall and a narrow section win. No Silvers pool on this venue.

The match was won by Steve Ford (pictured right) with 144lb 4oz from peg 17, most of his fish coming from his margins. Steve fished double whole worm on a 12 hook fished over maggot. Steve fed 8 pints of maggot in the last half of the match.

Runner up was his team mate Chris Cameron (pictured lower right with a bucket full) with 125lb 6oz from peg 26. Chris caught a bit more conventionally using 6 mm soft pellet fished over kinder potted hard 4’s, feeding 2 pints throughout the match.

Full Result:

1. Steve Ford 144-04-0 peg 17
2. Chris Cameron 121-06-0 peg 26
3. Shaun Wilson 106-12-0 peg 19
4. Neville Groves 96-12-0 peg 44
5. Richard Ahern 95-12-0 peg 15
6. Martin Howard 76-06-0 peg 46
……
9. Mike Nicholls 59-06-0 peg 36