Acorn Pole Only Series, Final Round. Sunday 26th May 2013

Firstly, a big thank you to Veals, for their continued sponsorship of the event, providing vouchers for 4th place in both categories. Also to Tony Rixon at Avon Angling for taking messages and finding reserves when necessary and bringing his scales along.  Try and support your local shops rather than buying from the internet. Ken Rayner also supplied a set of scales, so a big thank you to Ken. We might have had some different results had we to guess the weight of each net......  Also to all those who took part, everyone who couldn't make a match ensured a reserve fished, giving us a full house of 32 every match.

Myself and Paul, along with Glenn (Calvert) and Kev (Perry) ventured to the Blue Flame after the match and discussed a few ideas for next year, which will see a couple of changes, to hopefully, keep the series interesting.  One definite is that the silvers payout will be reduced, as the percentage paid out, given the numbers actually targeting them from the start was, on reflection, too high this year.

The overall winners spot was up for grabs, if league leader Pete Bartlett didn't get a good result, with Mike Nicholls, Tom Thick, Lance Tucker and Tim Ford all ready to pounce if he did slip up. The silvers title was already sown up, with Mark Broomsgrove having a perfect 40 points, John Bradford was in a strong position to take 2nd spot and vying for 3rd (or 2nd if John had a disaster) was Paul Faiers, Glen Calvert, Kev Perry and myself.

An open draw today, the draw was likely to be vital to sort out the final positions, as those in contention needed to draw in a section together. B section threw together, Pete Bartlett, who drew peg 9 again, as he did in round 1, Tim Ford on 8 and Mike Nicholls on 6. A strong section with Tony Rixon on peg 1 always likely to disrupt their quest for points and I was handed peg 4 in this section by Tom Thick who drew for me.

The Silvers only saw two of the contenders pegged together, John Bradford and Kev Perry in C section on pegs 13 & 15 respectively. Myself in B section, Glenn on 30 D section and Paul on A3, this was going to make it difficult to make up ground on Glenn and Paul, as I was pretty certain they'd both return with 8 points.

The weather had been the curse of this series, with ice and high winds impacting the early rounds, today saw bright sun and a flat calm lake, although the Top Lake did get some ripple, which aided fish catching.

As the pools were paid up front for this match, I ran an optional £10 superpool and with this in mind, I decided to fish for carp, as I though that would be the more likely route to decent pick up, albeit the section was a tough one. I set up a rig for banded pellet to fish tight across (although quite why I ever thought I'd compete with Tony doing this I don't know, I must have had sunstroke), a rig to fish on the second shelf,  a paste rig for full depth and a rig to fish down to the pallet of peg 5.  I started tight across, pinging 4's and a 6 in the band, there was indications of fish, but no bites, a switch to 8mm pellet saw a carp in the net, but that was to be pretty much it for that line, the water wasn't too coloured and the pole seemed to make the fish shy away.

A switch to the second shelf and double maggot brought an instant response, taking me to 15lb of carp in the first hour, which was pretty much on a par with all those I could see in the section, as it started off slowly.  The next couple of hours were pretty tough, I had my one and only fish down the edge, on meat, I kept swapping between lines and picked up the odd fish, but was falling behind as Tim Ford and Pete Bartlett were now catching a few shallow.

I got off my box and set up a NG Gimp for full depth, pumped some Devil's Spawn and softened some micro's. The micro's and a couple of softened 4's went in, straight in front, at the bottom of the far shelves, the thinking behind this, was that no one in the section was fishing for silvers, so it looked my best chance of making it 5 out of 6 pick ups in the series. This produced a couple of skimmers and a carp, swapping to a short line which had been only fed with maggot, produced a 10oz perch and some 12oz skimmers, although this died well before the end.  By now there was plenty of carp activity tight to the far bank, but there was no point in going for them, I kept plugging away on the maggot, trying to get a bonus tench.

At the all out, I had 32lb of carp on the clicker and I thought about 5lb of silvers, the fish weigh heavier than they look, as the carp went 44.02 and the silver 7.02 for a silvers first in section, mission accomplished, but, I was still convinced that it wouldn't be enough and so it proved. Paul and Glenn won their silver sections, as did John Bradford, with Kev second to John.  Paul's 39.04 of silvers from the top lake saw him nick 3rd place from Glenn, on weight.

It turned out to be a really tight match, with the weights spread around, so a fitting end to the series.

On the day:

1) Brian Slipper 112.15 peg 33
2) Pete Bartlett 112.03 peg 9
3) Lewis Jones 108.14 peg 23
4) Tony Rixon 99.15 peg 1
=5) Tim Ford 87.12 peg 8
=5) Tom Thick 87.12 peg 18

Silvers on the day

1) Paul Faiers 39.04 peg A3
=2) Glen Calvert 21.04 peg 30
=2) Russ peck 21.04 peg A8
4) Dave Poole 17.10 peg A1

Series Overall Final Placings

1) Pete Bartlett 40 points 374.04
2) Tom Thick 37 points 358.01
3) Mike Nicholls 37 points 264.08
4) Lance Tucker 35 points 226.13
5) Tim Ford 34 points 277.09
6) Lewis Jones 33 points 365.14

Series Silvers Final Placings

1) Mark Broomsgrove 40 points  87.00
2) John Bradford 39 points 59.02
3) Paul Faiers 36 points 80.08
4) Glenn Calvert 36 points 71.12
5) Chris Fox 35 points 50.13
6) Kev Perry 34 points 35.03

Well done to Pete and Mark, both with a maximum 40 points, I will post up a full table later in the week.