Pole Only Series, Final Round

Today saw the last of the pole only series, which for the first time was held on Plantation and Acorn lakes, todays sections were on Plantation Horseshoe Lake and the small lake at Acorn. Maybe the final venues had some input, as well as clashes with other matches, to the reduced numbers today.

Firstly, a get well soon message to Rod Wootten, Rod had a good position to win the series, but has suffered some ill health and missed the last two matches.

At the draw, Paul Faiers was presented with a card, which Mrs F sent via Glenn Calvert, it was his wedding anniversay - he'd forgotten, I bet he's not alone, I can never remember mine!!  Anyway, not to worry, Mrs F is camping in Exmouth, probably with Uncle Tony......  whilst Paul spends the Bank holiday weekend fishing.

As the sections were short on numbers today, the payout was just 1st in section and 1st in silvers, with the odd tenner left over going to the match winner.

It was B section for me today, the outside of Horseshoe lake, it looked good, fish moving and a colour that must have been caused by fish stirring up the mud. I had brought a couple of pints of maggots as the weather forecast had been for a cold, miserable day, looking at the lake and feeling the actual temperature, I had a hunch that they were destined for the freezer. I set up 4 rigs, a silvers rig to fish maggot or caster (but this was planned to be a last resort for once), a shallow rig with a B960 and a hair rigged band, a paste rig and a pencil float to fish Devils Spawn.

One lighter moment before the off, Darren 'Noddy' Vowles had set up, plumbed up and was virtually ready for the off, before he realised he was on the wrong peg...... Doh. Pay more attention next time please Noddy.....

The bait tray consisted maggot & caster, 4 and 6mm hard pellet, some Devils Spawn, micros and paste. On the all in I cupped in some micros and softened 4's at 9m left and groundbait/maggot at 8m right. there were some carp moving over the middle bar, so out with the shallow rig, which had a longish line, to avoid spooking the fish. This produced two fish in the first half an hour, they were cruising, but not really feeding. A look over the micros with paste saw a better fish in the net, followed by 3 more, although the size varied from 1/2lb to 3lb.

The groundbait/maggot line produced 1 fish all day, so no more about that, the micro/softened pellet line was now fizzing well, the first fizzing peg I have had in 2012!! A look in with 6mm Devils Spawn put the first silver in the net, a 1lb+ skimmer. A couple of carp followed, before things slowed up, there was no point in me fishing negatively, I couldn't pick up in the series money, so a section win was my aim.

The fish were still swirling over the shallow bar in the middle of the peg, so I went back on the shallow rig and upped the feed to 10 or 12 6mm pellets every 30 secs, this brought a run of fish, some of which ran the wrong side of the tin boards, so that livened things up!! With an hour to go the fish backed off the shallow line and it was back over the pellet and micros with paste, this produed a couple of fish, but also some frustrating liners and odd indications. Last 20 minutes on the Devils Spawn saw a couple more fish in the net, with 31 carp and 4 skimmers being the final total.

This was the first match for a while that I have enjoyed, it took a bit of work to keep the fish coming, but at least they did, I couldn't even muster the effort to write about last weeks match (4 roach). On the scales my 4 skimmers went 4.04, the 31 carp 82.04, the total of 86.08 being enough to win the section and the match (what a good idea to give the winner the odd tenner extra!!).

Section results on the day:

A: (Acorn)
1) Kev Perry 47.00
Silvers) Glenn Calvert 26.10

B: (Plantation)
1) Chris Fox 86.08
Silvers) Paul Faiers  27.00

C: (Plantation)
1) John Osbourne 72.10
Silvers) John Osbourne 3.14


Mr Soft Pellet - Dave Wride won the overall series and Paul Faiers took the silvers on weight from Mark Broomsgrove, both had a very creditable 5 section silvers wins.

Veals kindly provided some sponorship in the way of vouchers, these go to the Overall and Silvers anglers with the best weight, who didn't pick up money for the series. Overall that was Lance Tucker and in the Silvers, I managed to sneak in.

Final Overall table, with worst result dropped.

Name   Points   Weight 1 D Wride   44   385 4 2 S Carvello   43   256 12 3 B Slipper   41   248 8 4 G Calvert   41   165 6 5 M Bromsgrove   40   197 13 6 R Wootten   39   240 8 7 L Walker   37   220 15 8 L Tucker   35   282 1 9 K Perry   34   180 6 10 M Owens   33   160 5 11 A Hockin   33   138 2 12 C Fox   32   181 1 13 P Faiers   31   213 14 14 N Harvey   30   207 15 15 K Rayner   27   221 4 16 D Vowles   24   129 1 17 G Mewdell   23   117 11 18 R Lovering   22   186 11 19 P Lasson   22   152 4 20 R Heatley   22   134 15 21 J Osbourne   22   123 4 22 S Johnson   20   86 14 23 D Poole   20   61 13 24 D Baker   16   95 1 25 M Walsh   15   114 5 26 P Nicholls   14   35 0 27 A Maysom   11   75 10 28 M Tomes   6   40 5 29 S Parrtridge   5   12 0 30 M Michalski   3   29 2
Final Silvers table, with worst result dropped.
Name   Points   Weight 1 P Faiers   50   110 11 2 M Bromsgrove   50   85 4 3 G Calvert   44   100 4 4 D Wride   42   87 5 5 A Hockin   39   57 14 6 S Carvello   36   14 4 7 C Fox   35   62 7 8 K Rayner   34   46 15 9 J Osbourne   34   35 12 10 B Slipper   34   23 14 11 M Owens   33   58 14 12 D Poole   30   27 10 13 K Perry   30   27 6 14 R Wootten   27   54 15 15 L Tucker   27   46 2 16 R Lovering   20   28 3 17 M Walsh   20   15 8 18 P Lasson   20   12 4 19 S Johnson   18   46 5 20 R Heatley   14   27 12 21 G Mewdell   14   7 4 22 N Harvey   13   26 3 23 D Baker   12   6 2 24 M Michalski   11   19 0 25 M Tomes   9   21 2 26 D Vowles   8   2 8 27 S Parrtridge   6   3 7 28 A Maysom   5   11 10 29 L Walker   5   5 15 30 P Nicholls   3   1 0