I'll start off by giving everyone who turned up a big thankyou as the weather wasn't exactly !!I want to sit there like a lump of ice !! type day.
I was drawn on peg 15 which was not quite into the teeth of the easterly wind but close enough to be awkward at times.
Started off feeding liquidised bread at 11 mtrs and trickling a few pinkies and big maggots down the reeds by the side of me.
First thing that i noticed was that the bites where so delicate i couldn't decide if i was seeing the float dip so reshotted it down to just a pimple on the water, still some of the bites hardly sank the float.
After about 10 minutes had my first fish a small skimmer quickly followed by a gudgeon (thought i was back on the canal at Penkridge) this was the pattern over the next couple of hours small skimmers between half an ounce and one ounce and small gudgeon.
Every so often would try a pinkie or big maggot down the reeds but not a murmur of a bite, then the worse thing you want to see when the going is tough, and that is to see the guy opposite you land a carp about one and a half poundson a piece of corn. Well that wiped out all my hard work up to yet.
My fellow fishing partner Goughy was also having the same problem, small fish mainly skimmers, but he started fishing it completely against what the regulars had told us and that was to use bait sparingly, he started to spray maggots every cast and started to pick up bigger skimmers up to ten ounces fishing double pinkie.
Else where on the pool the cold was sorting out the men from the boys with one or two jacking it in after three hours into a four and half hour match.
I knew i was beating the anglers on either side as the last hour approached, providing they didn't hook a rogue carp or one of the larger skimmers.
At last i was able to blow the whistle for all out, and as they are brilliant at doing the staff at curborough started to weigh us in, the lad to my left weighed 1lb 3ozs I put 3lb 10ozs into the weigh net so felt quite happy as i'd caught around fifty odd fish, the lad next door reckoned he needed another half hour on the match as he weighed in 2lb 12ozs and had started to find the bigger skimmers.
First one to weigh in on the opposite side of the pool peg 23 was my mate Goughy who tipped the scales around to 8lb 13ozs this was to be the winning weight on the day.
Nick who came second with over 7lbs fished corn / worms / pellets alternating between them.
Overall apart from being so cold it was a good match concidering the water temperature was just above freezing point.
Results 19 Fished
1st Alan Gough 8lbs 13ozs
2nd Nick Pontain 7lbs 10ozs
3rd Mick George 6lbs 6ozs
4th Jez Meredith 4lbs 10ozs
Sections
A Mick Sutton 1lb 3ozs
B Arthur Shaw 3lbs 10ozs
C David Sutton 3lbs 13ozs
