Acorn Winter League Final Round, Saturday 29th February 2020

Last round of this league that has had very definitive sections, with A section producing the match winner every round (including this one).  Still as section points were key, it didn't matter about that.

Another stormy day forecast - great.  I was level at the top before taking into account droppers and this league is 5 matches, dropping your worst result, with weight deciding places equal on points at the end.  using this criteria I was 4th going into today and in the best section, so hopefully a few bites.

Disappointed to see 3 no shows, two of which were in the league leaders section, potentially affecting the result.  One had a broken bone, so understandable.

Into the draw bag and ping pong ball 13 comes out, its not won the section, but it has been second and when I found out 11 wasn't drawn I was happy, the best I could do is win the section, what others did was out of my hands.

No need to rush to the peg, for some reason we get 90 minutes to set up and with being able to park behind your peg, that's more than enough time.  Two lead rods, just in case the wind, which was straight at me, got too much for the pole. I did set up a topkit to fish banded pellet, but never had a bite on it, so no more to say about that.

Topkits to fish right across, on the second shelf, down the track at 5m and the RH margin, all with 0.14 hooklengths and 18 LWG hooks.  KND yellow elastic completes the set up.

Bit tray was simple, live and dead maggots, micros, expanders and hard pellets.  The only baits that were really used were the micros and maggots, I didn't have a bite on anything but maggots, the fish wanted some bait put in, not huge amounts at once, but little and often seemed best.

I'd started on bread on the bomb, searching round the peg and had one liner, so after 15 minutes switched to fishing across, maggot over micros and that saw a couple of carp netted after first landing a skimmer and a roach.

The 5m line produced a couple and I switched between both to keep an odd fish coming, with a couple of hours to go, I looked down the RH margin and immediately had a big F1 on triple maggot, followed by a carp, then one took me round the pallet leg, I lost it and never had another bite there.

A first for me, after losing the carp under the pallet of peg 12, I tried a pellet feeder in front of the pallet, again with maggots on the hook and had 3 carp on this, before switching back to the 5m line and rounding off the match with 3 more.  I thought I had 70lb of carp and a few silvers, including a 2lb perch.  The scales gave me 74.12, the required section win and the match win, that left me on equal points with Paul Nichols in second place, but missed out by weight, so a reasonable series, 3 section wins from 6.

Todays weigh sheets

League ended up as:

Craig Challigsworth 32 points 

Paul Nichols 30 points 238.09

Chris Fox 30 points 203.02

Mark Bartlett 29 points

Thanks to Brian & Paul for running it, well done to Craig and all the framers.

Todber Manor Winter League R3, Sunday 23rd February 2020

It was my turn to be on Whitepost for this round, so as I have only fished it once before I relied on those more knowledgeable to fill me in, damage limitation was the advice, not a good peg.

Just for a change it was muddy, windy and far from ideal conditions, but it's the same for everyone, so no point moaning (well, not too much...).

Wind was left to right and I felt about 8m was the limit I could sensibly fish, so no longer than that set up, a lead rod to fish bread and a maggot feeder rod.

I am not going to say to much on this blog, really struggled, had 49lb on my clicker at the end and weighed 49.08, so the best bit of the day was my clicking....

I had tried the bread, maggot feeder and switched to a small pellet feeder - never had a bite on any of them, not even a liner, which makes me think there weren't too many fish there, not sure what else I could have done, frustrating when that happens, but sometimes I just think the head of fish aren't in front of you.

The fish I caught were all at 8m on maggot, except one lonesome fish in the LH margin (which meant fishing over a small point to my left.

A day to forget, I can't say I learnt a lot or really had any idea how I could change things next time and I only beat two on the toplake.

Onwards and upwards...

Viaduct Winter League R4, Sunday 16th February 2020

No fishing last week, the Todber league called off because of the storm and another storm for this weekend, but not quite so windy, still with me being in the float only section on Lodge, it might be a challenge.

Glenn's turn to draw, he didn't do a bad job for me, 68, not usually a section winning peg, but usually worth a days fishing and a few points, he handed Mark 111 - nice, Rich 86 - nice, Paul 1 not so good and himself 2, not the worst peg on the lake, but not a first choice.

I thought the league was pretty much over after the last round, so told everyone to fish their own match - "fish for silvers if you want", I had only gone in the silvers pool, so intended to fish for them.

Set up a waggler to fish corn, 3 topkits for silvers, one with a Chianti with strung 11's to fish through the water, a 0.4g homemade diamond to fish at 13m
(no point going further with the wind that was forecast) and a light NG gimp to fish over that line as well.

I did set up a rig to go to the empty pallet of 67, set up with 0.20/0.18 in case I felt the need to go for a carp or two.

On the all in I fed two balls of GB/leam at 13m and one ball at 9m (just in case it got windier), then started on the caster at 2+2, this brought a few roach, but wasn't hectic, I gave it 30 minutes before going out over the 13m line, this brought a few decent skimmers, before I needed to re-feed, I had a couple more before it went quiet, I topped up again and came back on the caster line, this had roach and rudd not exactly lining up, but they were coming often enough and a decent enough size to stick at it.

I did look over the skimmer line again on several occasions and ventured past it with the waggler and corn, but it had slowed up, I was pretty convinced that going out to 16m and starting a new line would see another couple, but the roach, rudd, hybrids and perch (including one nigh on 2lb) were still coming on the caster line, so I stuck at it and ignored the empty pallet and the chance of a carp.

Glad I did, I managed 23.05 of silvers and second overall in the silvers, for a decent pickup and 12 points, so happy with that.  The team did OK with Rich winning Cary, Mark doing OK on Campbell, Paul was struggling, being in with match lake, which fished well, but he did grab 3rd in the silvers.  We were 4th on the day and still in with an outside chance of sneaking into the frame, although it will need all the stars to align on the last round.....

Overall
1. Adrian Jeffery - 86lb 9oz - peg 129
2. Dom Sullivan - 79lb 7oz - peg 20
3. M Ruff - 74lb 8oz - peg 41
4. John Gray - 72lb 7oz - peg 44
5. Richard A’Herne - 67lb 14oz - peg 86
6. Clint Wojtyla - 61lb - peg 43
Silvers
1. Adam Palmer - 25lb 4oz - peg 11
2. Chris Fox - 23lb 5oz - peg 68
3. Paul Faires - 22lb 9oz - peg 1
4. Dave Romain - 20lb 10oz - peg 38
5. Lance Tucker - 20lb 1oz - peg 126
6. Lewis Walker - 19lb - peg 61

Today’s Team Positions:
1. Thatchers Vets - 61
2. Sensus 88 - 60
3. Thatchers PI - 59
4. 2nd Time Lucky - 57
5. Team Keyford - 56
6. Fishing Tackle Warehouse - 50
7. Future Networks - 48
8. Trig’s Team - 46
8. Silverfox - 46
10. Guru Viaduct - 44
10. Parsigns - 44
12. PR Floats - 41
13. Wyvern Anglers - 36
14. Moaning Maggots - 33
14. Garbolino - 33
16. Team Amigos - 27
17. Viaduct All Stars - 25

Viaduct Winter League R3, Sunday 2nd February 2020

My turn on Cary for this one, Rich A'Herne doing the team draw, putting himself on 114, me on 96, Paul on 66, Glenn on 49 and Mark on 4 - not a terrible team draw..... or so we thought.

I was pretty convinced that I would have to catch carp to do any good and the peg has produced this league.  So, no pole today, two lead rods and a waggler set up.

I'm not going to wax lyrical about this one, it was a disaster, Cary has been my bogie lake in this league and this year it proved to be no exception.  Other were catching odd carp whilst my tip remained motionless, I managed a couple of skimmers on the waggler and corn and finally, about 2pm the tip went round - my reward, one of the 6lb stockies, everyone else was catching the big boys and girls.

I finally hooked one of the big ones with 5 minutes to go, it ran into a snag and the usually reliable robust Shimano Technium reel line was cut through but what ever the fish ran under -  branch I assume.

Well, that ended a fairly miserable day my stockie going 6.15 and the waggler caught skimmers matching that exactly and the team didn't fair too well either, coming in 12th, so onwards and upwards to the next one.

1. Callum Dicks - 111lb 2oz - peg 119
2. Des Shipp - 107lb 8oz - peg 131
3. Gary Coton - 96lb 14oz - peg 112
4. Nick Ewers - 92lb - peg 86
5. Steve Denmead - 84lb 8oz - peg 110
6. Henry Smith - 81lb 3oz - peg 123
7. Ivan Oakey - 81lb 2oz - peg 113
8. Clayton Hudson - 74lb 7oz - peg 85
9. Stu Woods - 68lb 2oz - peg 70
10. Dave Romain - 67lb 10oz - peg 64
Silvers
1. Adam Palmer - 21lb 8oz - peg 25
2. Shaun Townsend - 20lb 3oz - peg 105
3. Craig Edmunds - 19lb 2oz - peg 88
3. Mark Thorne - 19lb 2oz - peg 80
5. Nigel Easton - 18lb 10oz - peg 17

Teams Points on the Day:
1. Thatchers PI - 66
2. Fishing Tackle Warehouse - 60
3. Future Networks - 55
4. Parsigns - 52
5. Garbolino - 49
5. Team Keyford - 49
5. Guru Viaduct - 49
8. Silverfox - 48
9. Moaning Maggots - 44
9. Wyvern Anglers - 44
11. Team Amigos - 41
12. 2nd Time Lucky - 37
13. Trig’s Team - 36
14. Sensus 88 - 35
14. Viaduct All Stars - 35
16. PR Floats - 33
17. Thatchers Vets - 32