By Joe | No Comments
Last updated: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

After the disappointment of Saturdays superleague fish off it was nice to be picked for the winter league team for the match on thorne on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, and with the league more or less won with two rounds to go the pressure was off the lads, so we could all go and enjoy it. I was looking forward to it as it’s the first bloodworm fishing I’ve done in a while so it would be nice to get back into it. I drew peg 263 behind the flats at Dunstons and really fancied it for good points as if the fishing was to go to form id drawn the right end of the section!!!!
The peg is a nice one to fish as you can get in the margins with a platform and be level with the water whereas everyone else has to sit on the bank, I decided a simple 3 line attack would be fine so plumbed up at 7m 14m and 16m and decided to feed 6 balls of ground bait short, 8 balls packed with joker and bloodworm for skimmers at 14m and raw line at 16m. I set 3 rigs up, a 0.4gr senses lomme pencil style float with a bulk and 3 no.10 droppers, a 0.6gr same float etc and a 0.8gr jean François with a bit of line on the deck hopefully for some skimmers. I used size 18 mustad round bend match hooks on all of the rigs 0.07 hook lengths on the lighter rigs and 0.09 on the heavier one.

Anyway with all my bait fed at the start I went straight in on the 6m swim and had a few perch but nothing promising then all of a sudden had a series of 100mph bites, now this is common on there and usually signals the fish arriving and u get loads of liners! Anyway I started catching small roach and hybrids every cast and the anglers either side where doing the same, it was a proper fish race and every now and then the sport would slow just a little, I’d cup in a small nugget on greyed up joker and this just kept the fish coming back.

After 3 hours we all seemed to be neck and neck but the other end of the section was fishing much harder so it looked like a 3 horse race. I knew that just sticking to my guns and keeping the fish coming whatever the stamp would be the key. It did need a rest thought so I tried the longer line but it was much slower, the fish obviously enjoyed being fed closer in!!!! anyway I felt I was catching faster than either side but wasn’t 100% as they seemed to be catching really well, anyway my line just kept giving and giving right to the end. The Triana lad to my left had tried the caster for the last hour and probably had a couple of pound on that but I think I probably did of the small fish so knew it would be close. Also the Walton lad to my right had seemed to keep up with me on the small fish. Anyway the Triana lad weighed 10lb and I weighed 12lb 10oz with the Walton lad also weighing 10lb so id won the section comfortably! I did feel sorry for the lads at the other end as it was really grim with 5lb being the best down there but it only lasted about 5 seconds!

Anyway the team had won the match quite comfortably with our 30 point total, with Ossett and Daiwa Dons tying with 45 points in second place. I was really pleased to get my first section win for Barnsley after a couple of near misses but I hope this is the first of many……..roll on next week!!!!!

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