06-07-2025 - Ron Hardiman's Summer League - Round 5 - Westerleigh - Taylor's Pool and Shipp's Canal

Penultimate round of this well run league (Ron told me say this -  pictured some time ago 😁), which will be my last in the league as can't make the last round. This means losing one result as only allowed one dropper and have already had one stand in.

My turn on Shipp's. The draw bag gave my peg 10. So, from the four matches I have drawn peg's 10 and 20 twice. Both average pegs at the moment.

It was sad to find a dead 6 lb Carp in my peg. Ricky netted it out for me - thanks mate, who later nearly fell in due to nodding off.

From last experience gained match on this peg decided only needed GB and Maggots. One short Ronnie rig, 4x12 Winter for two barrels for hopefully a Skimmer or two and a 0.3 RJ slim for the LH margin.

Fed the Skimmer line with GB and a few LR's and tried the the line straight away on single LR to catch a few small Ronnie's - no Skimmers. Meanwhile been loose feeding the Ronnie rig line with LR's - No GB as wanted to catch some Perch which GB seem to turn off. Had a steady 90 minutes catching Perch and Ronnie's before it went quiet. Expected a Carp had took some interest and yep soon after that thought was landing a 4 lb fish. From the chatter around the canal it was fishing hard with most only having a Carp or two. So brought the RJ into use with triple LR hook bait over loose fed same and had a run of decent Carp. After we had a bit of a squall most of the others started to catch and with the wind picking up into peg 6 expected the weights to now come from that end. Set up a small dibber for tight into the margin where I started feeding the GB in 18 inches of water and had a few more plus a couple of munters, but as anticipated foul hooked a few over the GB.

Weighed 72 lb 8 oz which included 7 lb of silvers for the silvers win and 5th in the match, again average 5 points. But really enjoyed it, and nearly the Carp fishing!

Shipp's canal and the match was won by Bela Bakos (pictured with the silvers winner) from in form peg 8 with 103 lb 7 oz. Until the squall Bela was struggling with one Carp and thought I heard some crying. However, as expected he turned it around fishing his top set with DR's hook bait over GB and DR's feed. Well done matey can't keep a good man down.

Best of luck for all in the last round.

Back to the pub for a decent pint of Doombar. Good job the Banter Police wasn't in attendance.

Weigh Sheets: