London winter league final round

[Mullarkey]

London Winter league final round
GUC Slough Arm Langley Boats section



This was the final round and as previously documented in my last blog, we needed to win or at least beat Oakwood to go through to the semi at GV. The results of earlier rounds had been dominated by which teams drew the favoured pegs, this venue was known by all to be probably the fairest venue in the South. Hardly any end pegs and no bonus big fish to worry about, this match was always going to be about who could keep putting small roach and perch into the keep net steadily over the allocated five hours. We were all sitting together in Farlows clubhouse in a very relaxed manner, not really bothered which number we drew although from an individual point of few none of us were relishing drawing K section, the only one which is off the boats section and likely to be struggle. Our allocated draw for the day was peg 5 and apart from a few comments from team members that I only draw end pegs when the`re not needed, I went through our usual pre-match ritual of telling everyone where they had drawn and what they could expect, whether punch was an option and also how to consider feeding their pegs. We had two runners (Syd Wilson and Gary Manoli) chomping at the bit and everyone made their way to their pegs with one thing on their minds, to beat Oakwood off peg 4 and Wickford on peg 3, nothing else mattered.

I had drawn H section and on arriving at my peg found that I was two pegs away from where I`d drawn in the previous weeks open. Incidentally I had only caught three small perch the previous week, where I`d made a mistake in breaking too big a hole in the ice and fed too much bait. This week was different through as there was no ice to contend with and no wind, it was foggy and not too cold.
My swim was double boated and to reach the nearest boat was seven sections of pole. Every peg on this section of canal has a boat to fish to, some like mine have two moored together and there are the odd ones where there`s three, yes three, moored length ways along the canal. The water was pretty clear and you could see decaying weed in the margins and in certain light conditions you could see the bottom in the middle. This is normal for this canal and the trick to catching successfully is to not plunder a line.

I plumbed around my peg and found that against the boat in front of me I had about 2ft 6in where as at the back end of the boat near the prop I had over 3 foot. Its important to consider whether the boat is inhabited for the day or not because you don`t want to choose a line near where a person comes out of their boat, often to chat to the anglers, as your peg is then killed stone dead. Luckily my nearest boat seemed uninhabited so I intended to have one line straight across in the shallower water and my main line was designated for the deeper water at the rear. I also plumbed for a punch line at six joints at an angle to one side and a joker line again at six joints the other way.




I set up 4 rigs:

1) 0.40 Sensas Auchy with 07 hooklength to a size 20 PR26 for the punch.
2) 4 x 10 Concorde to 07 hooklength with 22 green gama for joker fishing across and down the middle.
3) 3 x 9 Lattimer wire to 06 hooklength and size 26 IMI for fishing straight across in the shallower water.
4) Lastly a 4 x 12 Sensas Creil to 07 hooklength to a size 22 green gama, again for fishing around the peg looking for perch.
All the rigs were set up with around a metre of line between the float and pole tip as I felt it was important to keep the pole away from your swim. Luckily there was no wind so control of the tackle wasn`t compromised. Also as the bulk of our catches were anticipated to come on joker and once a fish takes the bait, they very rarely drop it (provided your rigs are shotted properly) so you can let them hang their selves and bites are rarely missed.

Bait wise I had about a kilo of joker, a pinch of bloodworm and some bread.
The only groundbait was a small amount of liquidised.

When the match started I fed my punch line first with a small golf ball sized bit of liquidised, I then fed a full cup of joker in the deep swim at the rear of the boat and then about a quarter of a cup across and the same down the middle to my left.

First drop in on the punch saw the float fail to settle properly and a quick inspection showed that the hookbait had some fine weed covering the hook. I shallowed up a bit and shipped the rig out. That`s better, the rig settled and the fine orange bristle slipped below the surface and roach number one was on it`s way to the net. I`d like to report that that was the start of many roach caught on punch but it didn`t really happed and after 4 fish caught within the first fifteen minutes I change to joker down the middle to my left, however I decided to change my punch line into a joker swim so I fed some bait for later. First put in on the middle joker line I caught a nice roach of maybe 3 oz, which I netted. Looking down my section I could see that everyone was catching so I made sure that my concentration was 100% as I didn`t want to slip behind. After one hour I`d caught about 20 fish for just over a pound and I guessed that I would need around 100 fish for a weight of 5lb to do well in the section (this section the previous week was won with 3lb 14oz). Because we needed to beat Oakwood to qualify and they were on the next peg I had to try and keep ahead of my next peg neighbour, Bill Mariner and things were going ok. I kept rotating my across swim with my middle swim but I wanted to keep the part of the swim where I`d fed a full cup of bait for later in the match, as it was evident from the previous weeks match that our anglers who had fed heavily caught very well late. As the match progressed I continued to catch quite a few roach, all good size fish upwards of an ounce with very few missed bites and none shedding the hook as I shipped in, the fine number 2 latex elastic was working well. I was well on target for a hundred fish but Bill next to me was also catching well and he told me that Steve (the mortuary attendant) Joy for Wickford was catching one a bung on peg 3, so it was time to try my main anticipated catching line at the rear of the boat.
First drop in the float disappeared slowly and as I hooked the fish I could see the silver flash as a good roach tried to escape. Safely netted it was at least a 4 ozzer, next drop in resulted in a 3 ozzer and by this time our runner had turned up behind me. Next put in a much bigger roach was hooked, again the fish flashed around but was safely netted and it was at least 6 ounce. Gary commented on the size of fish I was catching and went on his way. The word on the bank was that it was a very tight match and it was probably Wickford who were winning it and no one could call it between ourselves and Oakwood. I continued to catch off all lines, decent roach and when perch showed up it was time to refed and switch to another swim. This may sound like the perfect match but as always something decides to try and ruin things. Firstly, my stomach was really playing up, I`d had a curry the night before and Mr Brown was knocking on the door. Unfortunately after a while he was hammering to get out and with cold sweat running down my brow I had a decision to make, do I go for a wild one in the woods behind me or nip the old butt cheeks in and soldier on. I chose the latter, as being an office worker I ain`t used to doing things that hairy arsed builders treat as all in a days work.

The other problem that arose was that the thread on my wonderful new Daiwa Arity landing net handle decided to give up the ghost and my landing net was working loose every time I netted a fish. I changed landing nets twice but both were the same. I`d only bought the landing net handle during the week (eighty five quids worth) as I`d broken my Garbolino Netsy the previous week pushing a big sheet of ice out of my peg (my fault I know).

Anyway going into the final hour and a half I was still catching but nowhere near as fast, I`d caught very few bits and I`d noticed that Bill and the rest of the section had slowed as well so I was hopeful that if I could just keep winkling out some stamp roach and perch that I might do quite well. Bill kept moaning about the amount of fish being caught to his right and I thought that there wasn`t much in it between me and him. During the last hour I found that I couldn`t catch more than two fish from each swim before I had to rest it, every fish, especially the roach were caught four or five inches off bottom and I definitely think that the long line between the float and the pole helped. Bills swim completely died in the last hour, but I found that I could catch decent roach, not loads but 2-3 ounce fish by varying the way I laid the rig in, sometimes by holding the rig against the natural tow, then letting the rig settle, other times by going in on the back swing and letting it pull though fast with the tow. As the whistle went I was happy with the way my match had gone and I packed up in double quick time as my stomach was still going ten to the dozen and I was concerned that I wasn`t going to make the club house bogs in time. I was even contemplating leaving my net and driving post haste back to Farlows but then Dave Vincent turned up with the scales and I was first to weigh in on my section and surprisingly enough my 118 fish weighed 8lb 15 oz. The rest of the section went as follows:

Bill Mariner 6lb 3oz
Steve Joy 6lb 8oz
Ian (wing commander) Young 7lb 14oz
Steve Havard 3lb something

Once I`d learn`t that I`d won the section I was off, i must have looked like the road runner shooting down that canal towpath back to the car. Back at Farlows I was straight into the nearest available cubicle and when I emerged a few minutes later I had`nt got a care in the world and it was back to the important things, how had we done as a team?



In my speed to get back It turned out that I was the first one there so I ordered myself a lager and sat back and watched the hammers putting the wind up Chelski.

As the boys came in it turned out that we had done very very well, SEVEN section wins (Gary Miller, Beadle, Flatnose, Todger, Boris, Barry Oliver and me). We also had section seconds from Stevie Tyler and Martin Foster plus a last in the dreaded K section.

When the results were read out we had won with 44 points with Wickford and Oakwood tying for second place on 35 points.
This meant that the final league result was that us, Oakwood and Wickford all tied on 12 match points. To decide who goes through to the semi the organiser had to resort to his records and it turned out that we were deemed to be the league winners by courtesy of having more match wins (3) with Wickford coming through in second place because they had 2 match wins and 3 second placings to Oakwoods 2 match wins and 2 second placings. How close was that!

So it`s been a good week for us, what with us now being sponsored as a team by Maver and getting through to the semi at GV, I`d like to take this opportunity in thanking all the teams that took part in our league this year, good luck to Wickford joining us a GV and hard luck Oakwood. See you all next year.

Teams on the day

Maver Image VDE 44
Browning Wickford, Oakwood Angling 35
Oakwood N14 21
Fox Match Raiders 14

Final league placings
Maver Image VDE 12, 3 match wins
Browning Wickford 12, 2 match wins, 3 2nds
Oakwood Angling 12, 2 match wins, 2 2nds
Oakwood N14 22
Fox Match Raiders 27

Individuals on the day

1st Paul (Boris) Medcraft Maver Image VDE 9lb 1oz 8 drm
2nd Steve Clark Maver Image VDE 8lb 15 oz
3rd Simon Colclough Browning Wickford 8lb 13oz
4th Chris (Beadle) Vandervleit Maver Image VDE 8lb 8oz
5th Barry Oliver Maver Image VDE 8lb 1oz
6th Danny Grimsey & Pete Thomas Browning Wickford 7lb 12oz

[Simple]

Great read, thanks very much

[TK]

Good read as usual - thanks for the posting and best of luck for the match at GV

[Woodhouse]

Steve

Is it going to be difficult to get the troops motivated about going to Gold Valley?

[Mullarkey]

No I don`t think so Lee,

we`ve got a team in the Rushmoor league at GV that runs up to the semi and I would expect that everyone will be up for the challenge. I don`t think our boys dislike the fishing at GV, we just find it a strange choice of venue for such an important event.

Imagine the reaction of someone who knew nothing about match fishing being told the following situation:

take the current freshwater world champion,
who along with some of the current members of the current freshwater team champions,

fish for the best team in the land

and the organisers of the biggest winter league in the UK decide to hold a one-off match in the pond in his back garden!

[joffmiester]

cannon fodder comes to mind
still chris will get you sorted

[joffmiester]

its a bit like lindholme
mondays match alan scotthorne
tuesdays match alan scotthorne
wednesdays match tom pickering
thursday match alan scotthorne
fridays match alan scotthorne
saturdays match andy oldham
sundays match alan scotthorne

where are barnsley oh yes lindholme

[Mullarkey]

Joff,

everyone is fishing for second and third place,

although that will be tough enough with Bordon, Delcac and Surrey Starlets practically living at the place. Anyway we`re going to definitely put the effort in and with anglers like Gary Miller, Chris V and Steve Tyler we will be in the mix at the end.

[ropa]

its a bit like lindholme
mondays match alan scotthorne
tuesdays match alan scotthorne
wednesdays match tom pickering
thursday match alan scotthorne
fridays match alan scotthorne
saturdays match andy oldham
sundays match alan scotthorne
Cough splutter
What venue have you managed to pull out the bag with yer funny handshakes ??????

where are barnsley oh yes lindholme

[Chris V]

Joff,

everyone is fishing for second and third place,

although that will be tough enough with Bordon, Delcac and Surrey Starlets practically living at the place. Anyway we`re going to definitely put the effort in and with anglers like Gary Miller, Chris V and Steve Tyler we will be in the mix at the end.

crappity smack that i aint going.





















Well okay i might.









A couple of times.

[chavey]

Steve you were lucky you didn't 'Shart' holding on for that long, for an explanation of shart and many more have a look here:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shart

[diddy]

well done to you boys and best of luck in the semi AND the final .......
theres a prediction.