Thursday, 16 March 2017

Thursday 16/03/2017 - Bathampton AA Silvers League - Final Round Six - Bridge Pool

Last match of the six match Silvers League which I was leading by one point with a better overall weight, so needed a section second to win overall. As I had breakfast at home I was first to arrive at the draw so walked the Lake, pegs 3, 8, 10, 14, 15, 26, 28, 29, 30 and 32 were showing signs of feeding Skimmers. That said I didn’t mind where I drew so long as I missed pegs 2 and 34 as no one's going to get a days fishing from these pegs.

In to the draw box and out comes peg 21. Umm, difficult peg because I had pegs 26, 28, 29 and 30 all of which had the form to beat my peg. What was worse these form pegs had good anglers on them – double bugger. I had my work cut out but the peg was mine for the next six hours and I wasn’t going to run it down but nurture it. I was thinking 10lb would be a good target.

Peg 21 offers plenty of options but went for three rigs – a 4x16 F1 black top to fish top-set plus three at 10-o-clock for maggot and GB. The same rig would also double up at top-set plus 4 for maggot or Pellet over micro, a 4x12 F1 yellow top to fish at 12 metre, 12 inches up the far shelf again maggot and GB. The final rig was a 4x10 Speedy Titan to fish the inside margin.

I started on the short GB lone and started to catch well mainly small Skimmers until I hooked what I thought was a Tench that was played carefully until I saw a red tail so the wrong colour fish and a 4lb Carp was returned to bugger off. The swim subsequently died. So after trying to revive the swim I was forced to try the margin with caster over caster which wasn’t working and produced nothing. So opened a pellet/maggot line at 11.5 metres at 10-o-clock, same story producing just one small Roach. I went for a walk along the section to give my back some relief, I reckon I was lying joint second with Rich Coles who was on peg 26 which I know from experience can die on you. After a cuppa it was time to go over with maggot and GB luckily this produced a menagerie of small fish at least I was getting bites. I stayed here until the last hour giving all the swims another opportunity to help out adding a few more small fish including the margin rig but with maggot this time.

I finished the match with 12lb 14oz which unfortunately only gave me three points. That said I did enjoy fishing this peg as I needed to work at it. With Callum Dicks winning his section I was pushed into second place overall in the league by weight over Steve Dawson who was third – All pictured below.


Steve Dawson won the match from peg 15 with 26lb 8oz. Steve struggled fishing his favoured pellet and it wasn’t until he went for broke dumping a big pot of maggot at 10 metres that he started catching Skimmers during the second half of the match.

The league was well administered by Chris Rolfe who recognised that the pegging could be bettered for next year. Thanks Chris.

Full Result - On The Day:

1. Steve Dawson 26-08-0 peg 15
2. Dave Willmott 24-06-0 peg 29
3. Dave Wride 23-13-0-peg 6
4. John Fuidge 23-12-0 peg 28
4. Tony Rixon 23-12-0 peg 8
6. Paul Barnfield 21-0-0 peg 11

Overall Final League Placing:

1. Callum Dicks/Des Shipp 9 points
2. Mike Nicholls 10 points weight 76-12-0
3. Steve Dawson 10 points weight 73-13-0

Weigh Sheets:





















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