By Matt | No Comments
Last updated: Thursday, June 5, 2008

This Saturday was the Charity/Memorial match at Riverside fishery for one of the guys in Worksop Angling Supplies, Trevor, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year. He was a top Guy and the sell out off 44 tickets in the first few days of the event opening shows how popular he was. Greg Forrester did a great job of organising the event, the match raised over £800 for Trevor’s’ Wife’s chosen charity, through the tickets and a large raffle on the day. Hopefully we can fish the match annually as although the fishing was hard, the event was great.

The fishery had been fishing hard on the run up to the event, and after talking to a few people, it sounded even harder, with some people fishing pinkies! I drew peg 16, and it looked really inviting as I plumbed up. I set various pole rigs up, both on the deck and shallow, mainly to fish maggots and casters for the silver fish. At 5 metres I had 6 foot of water, and fed worm and caster sparingly through a kinder pot, and fed a few micro pellets and casters at 13m. Rigs for on the deck were my favourable Tamas Walter series 1, on 0.10 lines to an 0.08 hook link and a size 20 hook. My shallow rigs were 4×10 and 4×12 Chianti’s, strung out with number 11 shots, with the same gear as the other rigs.

It definitely lived up to being hard, as the first fish I saw caught was an eel!!! It must have come from the river that runs nearby. I had my first fish, a tiny ide, after half an hour, but things were quiet everywhere.

I started to play about with things, and fished on the deck, but with a light strung out rig to catch small rudd and the odd roach on maggot. There were no big fish being caught, so I kept plugging away with there tiny fish. It was by no means fast, and with two hours gone I had probably 1lb or so, which was ok from what I could see!

I had a few tries on bigger baits, pellets, worm, for a carp, but an ide of around 5oz was all that showed on its own. Greg confirmed that everyone was really struggling, so it was back on the bits for me.

With an hour and a half to go, I noticed the gut a few pegs up catch two better skimmers fishing 14.5m shallow, and he was really blasting maggots in. Nothing was doing, so I was out there doing the same. I worked a treat, and I managed 5 better skimmers, between 4 and 10oz in the last 45 minutes, as well as the odd roach.

There had been some good banter all the way round the lake throughout the day, which made up for the poor fishing, but in the end I weighed 5lb 5oz, and finished 4th overall out of 44 anglers. I was pleased to do well, and narrowly missed out on third by 5oz, with 6lb 15oz winning the match, and Andy Pickersgil finishing close 2nd with 6lb 6oz.

The fishing was only a part of the match really though, it’s nice to fish for another cause, so hopefully it will continue over the years.

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