Monday, 6 January 2014

Winter League Fishing: How the mighty fall...

Match: TBF Winter League (Round 3)
Venue: Tunnel Barn Farm, Shrewley, Warks
Date: Saturday, 16th November
Angler: Shaun Little (MAP Designer and Consultant)

Morale was high going into the third round. The weather was mild and the team was sitting in second position. The team vibe was one of laughter and general banter. What could possibly go wrong?…

Well, I’m going to keep this one short and sweet because pretty much everything went tits up. For those of you who have been reading my blog might of realized its been few weeks since I last posted one (four weeks to be precise), as I didn’t want to re-live the memories.

Anyway enough of my moaning; considering the mild weather for the time of year, the fishing was hard over the whole complex in the week leading up to the round. The team plan was simple; start by dobbing bread towards any features, as the colour had dropped out, then switch to pellets short and if this didn’t produce bites we would loose feed maggots over it for the last hour and rotate maggots further out. 

At the draw Kurtis was once again required to work his magic and he didn’t let two of the team down. Would you believe it Mark Malin was on Extension 21… again! I honestly don’t know if this has ever happened in this league before, bearing in mind that there are 76 anglers fishing and it’s completely random where you draw each week. To draw the same lake 3 weeks in a row is good but the same peg is insane. As for the rest of the draw Aiden was on Club 11 this is a peg you would always fancy. Kurtis was on House 1 the most unpredictable of pegs it could be rigid or void of fish. Then I was on New Pool 4, which always seems devoid of fish. 

I’m not going to waffle on about how crap my peg or day was; the peg is about eight metres wide (seven if you take into account the reeds) and about 4ft deep. I caught pretty much nothing until the last hour fishing maggots at 13-metres into peg 3 and peg 5 for a total weight of 28lb. Weights around the lake were very tight – another 4lb would of propelled me into the top half – but I didn’t have 4lb more so only beat four others on my lake. Disappointing is a word that comes to mind.  As for the rest of the team, Mark once again won the lake; actually he destroyed the lake with 30lb to spare. He pretty much knows each fish by name on that peg now! Well done again mate.  Kurtis and Aiden both had days similar to mine; so on the team front things weren’t looking to rosy.

With a team score of 32 points we were next-but-last on the day, dropping down to seventh in the overall table. What a rollercoaster – hours before it was all smiles and banter, now the atmosphere was slightly less buoyant.


I suppose this is the addiction of match fishing, the extreme highs and lows of winning and losing. It will be case of trying to hit the ground running for the next round. But there’s still a long way to go with seven rounds left....  

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