On Saturday it was down to Todber and once again Adrian Dew and me employed the patented hanging back technique at the draw even though it showed signs of faltering in the last match. With three tickets remaining we made our move and looking at the sheet, rather worryingly the only spaces left were at the near end. Ade opened his ticket to see 62 while it was 64 for me and as for our famous patented hanging back technique, it was a case of literally ‘back to the drawing board’!
On the whistle I fed a couple of pole lines before starting on a maggot feeder across, it took 15 minutes to get a bite and my first fish was a plucky gudgeon. Then had two decent skimmers along with a nice roach in quick succession and was actually doing okay although I was sure it wouldn’t last. Going into the second hour I had a little roach and a small tench but was waiting ages between bites.
Odd fish were starting to come out on the pole so I had a look at 13 metres for nothing and just a single missed bite a section further out. Although Adrian, me, Matt Skyme and Rocky were struggling, I could see landing nets being regularly being used further up the lake. I spent the remainder of the match on the feeder hoping for some big skimmers but only managed two more roach and pulled out of one to end up with a grand total of nine fish!
The scales started at our end and Ade weighed 4lb 14oz before my fish went 4lb, Matt had 5lb 10oz, Rocky DNW’d, Andy on 67 weighed 6lb 6oz, Ginger had 7lb 4oz, Nick P weighed 7lb, Jon Gray on 69 had a great weight of 19lb 10oz and then Rod Dunford won the match with a fantastic 29lb 6oz of bream and big skimmers. Mark Blake took third spot with 8lb 12oz on 72, Lee Jan weighed 7lb 6oz to take the nuggets off me, Ade and Roy W who had 6lb and Martin F chucked back on 75. Photos courtesy of Todber Manor*
Rod had 29lb 6oz which included some lovely bream*
Jon was second with 19lb 10oz*
Mark Blake with his third placed 8lb 12oz*
1 – Rod Dunford (Todber) – 29lb 6oz
2 – Jon Gray (Todber) – 19lb 10oz
3 – Mark Blake (Todber) – 8lb 12oz
Lee won the nuggets which he kindly donated to the charity pot*
Lee kindly donated the three nuggets he won plus Nick generously gave me £3 and I added £2 as the Nugget-O-Meter climbed up to £229.
There’s still a great offer running if you fancy treating yourself to some new fishing gear, use the exclusive discount code AgainstMenandFish10 to get 10% off when you shop online at Somerset Angling
Also I still have copies of my book available from eBay here or Amazon here
And if you could spare five minutes to leave a nice review on Amazon, it would be very much appreciated.
Next up – Summerhayes
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
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