ANGLING TRUST WINTER LEAGUE WINNERS 2013
BRILLIANT BUNCH OF LADS AS WELL
scruffy northerners
the week started off with a little panic as the man behind the scenes Roger Wakenshaw who had taken the time to look after us from day one had waited to see how we would approach the venue before stepping in with ideas but the lack of fish was a worry as it started to look like big fish or bust as you have seen on prievous posts i was quite happy that the lads had got back into feeder fishing and their termial tackle spot on none of this silly hook lengths as the final approach roger who knows more about the tidal trent and tides than the rest of us put together brought up the float rod waggler stick and possible the pole
this shocked one or two lads but more and more small roach ,dace and bleack had started to show and the tide would be hurrendous on the day and with the temps up in the 70c Roger didn't think the big fish would play ball 
so the lads had a final meeting but the lads that had the confidence in the big fish ares would stick with it for the first hour or longer if they had caught others would give less time and more time trying to catch a fish or even a biteat the draw Roger was there bright and early he had a peg for peg map which i called the extra man ;)he then took time with each and every member of the team telling them where to fish and how long to give it on each line most important
after the lads went off to the their pegs Roger said to me its a average team draw but we had missed a lot a of really bad individual pegs
and these are fishlesswell off we went bank runners in place as i thought phone were not permitted ::) ::) how wrong was that as the first section we got too most were on there phones and body language told me that straight away it was fishing pants the tide was a little later and had only just started pulling off
none of our lads had caught much and Dorking had balled it and most had caught a Bleak or small roach
we then started to pick up on this and a good job as it wouldn't of lasted long with the tide running out Des shipp was catching a roach every put in while all around were biteless our man Nick moss soon picked it up with some encouragement and before we left he was catching bleak and dace job done as Darren cox below had still stuck to the feeder although these pegs are some of the no no'sblistering hot it was getting on for dinner and things had slowed right down the tide was also at its lowest level time for the tidal gods to kind
i bumped into lloydy doing a fine job as well for maver midlands you couldn't call it bank running more like a stroll with pedro on tow as well we thought it was time for abreak so we mugged lloydy to come with us
it didn't take a lot
and with four big lads it was off for a cold lager or two
and a spot of lunchendless phone calls up one minute
and down the next 
in fairness Lloydy didn't eat all the chips but they were lovely homemade door stoppers
so he just dribbled a bit after endless more phone calls midland maver had bagged a few bonus fish andi had started to think we needed a few ourselves
so it was off to worsthorpe just hoping we'd got all three catches a phone call that Lloydy had taken had said the lad at the begining of the section had either 1 or 3 barbel our lad was on B1
another call rob parker down stream had 12 fish bites and bobs and we had thought that our lad on A1 had also caught as the bailif had said our lad was catching on a bolo 
a bit of a panic as our lad hadn't got a pole or a bolo rod he was sitting on a barbel area as we arrived at his peg he had not had a single bite no one had in around him apart from Wil Raisin 20 fry we looked around his peg and spotted a few so we said just have ago if Wil is doing it he's thinking of one thing and one thing only POINTSwith no kit to talk about the simplest rig was set up tied to the top end of a float rod lucky a small enough rig was found and half a pinkie was used as bait
tense momments followed then he caught one then another and another andended up with 20 plus that was all ten anglers that had caught on the day how they ever worked out the weight of those fish as Wil weighed 30 in for 30grms and Gaz weighed 20 in for 10grms and another angler weighed 2 in for 20grms 
still it didn't matter we had points from the worst section in the match so it was a race back who had what how many points it was a nightmare no signal then the computer could only do high points so everything changed 
it was starting to get to me so i crossed the road at the pub and walked until i had a signal they soon started coming in half ways top 3s 12,10,10,8,8,7 the only bad points was a 3 wasit enough so started talking and listening to other teams boy it was close ikept two points back from everyone 
as i'm sure they did the samebut when Bob read the results out from the bottom to the top i began to think we'd missed out as 8th had 50 odd points and we'd got 75
then he called out starlets i knew we had a chance but when he called out Dorking 3rd that was it i didn't care thats why you practice thats why you can't take anything for granted2nd it was Leicester sensas
was it my strongest team Yes for this event it was the practice that counted i left some top anglers out myself included but i know they were right behind my choice and thats what makes a good team
the only downer was Dorking never hung around at the end to encourage the other teams only five of the team stayed for there photography for 3rd place
a lot of teams are out there that would of loved a placing and a team photo in the press just think about it Dorking if these other teams didn't compete you wouldn't be as good as you are must say diddy shook everyones hand
