By Tom | No Comments
Last updated: Monday, September 15, 2008

Saturday saw the last round of the Ranskill Summer League, I was tied on points in top spot with Les Richmond, with Carl Sweatnam just one point behind so we all still had everything to play for!

I was disappointed when I pulled my hand out of the bag and found peg 20 stuck to my mitt, not the best of pegs, and when I found out I had Steven Foster on the peg to my right that can reach up to an island, I knew I would have my work cut out to beat him. The only saving grace was that Les had drawn an equally tough section, with Steve’s dad John to beat on peg 9, so it wasn’t going to be easy for him either.

I kicked off on the deck at six metres, and soon the ide were swirling every time I potted some bait in. I switched to my shallow rig, which saw a steady stream of better fish come to the net. I was getting a fish a chuck, and the stamp seemed to be getting bigger. After having perhaps 15lb in the space of half an hour thoughts of a bumper weight were beginning to materialsise. Then the sun came out, and that was that.

The shallow line dried up as quick as it had started, and I was sat watching Steve next door catch, fishing up to the cover of the island. There was nothing happening out in front of me, so I decided to focus my attention on the margin line, where I hoped to catch a better stamp of skimmer. I did get the odd one, but they weren’t exactly coming quickly. A carp made a mess of my light skimmer rig, so I changed to some animal gear and got one out about 4lb, but that was that, I kept feeding and trying the six metre line but the stamp of fish was small on here, so I decided to stick to my margin.

At the all out, I knew that the best I could hope for was second in section, and the scales confirmed this, with Steve weighing 80-14-0, and my net going 44-7-0 which gave me two points. Les was second in his section, with John Foster weighing 70-0-0, and Carl Sweatnam who was a point behind us won his section with 74-0-0 meaning there were three of us tied on 11 points!

This meant it went down to weight, and luckily I came out on top with my best eight weights totalling 466-7-0. Carl was second with 436-0-0, and Les third with 395-2-0. It has been a cracking series, and it was great that it went right down to the wire, Carl and Les were unlucky to lose out on weight, as they have both been mega consistent.

The payout was really good, I scooped £350 for winning it, with Carl picking up £250 and Les getting £200 for third. Nigel Wheatcroft took fourth with 12 points, and picked up £150, with Mark Holmes and Simon Short taking fifth and sixth spot respectively, with both picking up in excess of £100.

The great thing about the way that the venue has fished, is that a wide range of methods have worked right through the series. Matches have been won on dog biscuit, bomb and pellet, pellet fished shallow, pole fished worm and caster, pole fished meat, feeder fished meat and the floating pole. Winning pegs have been 41,23,33,17,18, 37, 28 and 11 That to me is testament of a good venue, as it isn’t the same pegs and methods winning all the time, it is down to anglers being on the right peg and making the right decisions on the day. What more can you ask from a venue?

As requested by a couple of people, I have attached details of he rigs I have used on the below diagram.

I decided not to fish on Sunday, as I had loads of preparation to do for the forthcoming fishing4fun festival which is running on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. I did however have a run out to watch Matt Godfrey on the canal for an hour, and managed to catch a couple of perch on his gear, so at least it wasn’t a fishless Sunday!

I will fill you in on how the fishing4fun festival has gone, and include some pictures on Saturday.

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