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Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Sunday 26th March 2006.

Headed North to Sessay to organise the Open Fishing Match.

67 of us hardy soles turned out to try their luck at the drawbag.

Drew Peg 36 at The Oaks Lakes, Sessay. www.theoakslakes.co.uk

My rigs consisted of a 4x12 float across to the island in 2ft of water. .10 line straight through to a size 20 hook White hydro through 1 section (the no. 2) completed the setup. I set up a 4x14 float in approx 3ft of water, .11 line straight through and white No 10 latex completed this set up. The deep rig had .11 line again, with a .50 gm float in about 5ft of water.

My bait consisted of expander pellet for hookbait, with micro pellets for feed. a few maggots and corn as a change bait. My intention was to feed all of my bait via a fruitshoot top.

I had Meathead for company on one side (peg 35) with Magnum on peg 34 and somebody Bennett on Peg 37, peg 38 empty and Orc Wardell on Peg 39.

The side bet was struck with Meathead (what a mistake to start with). Started off OK feeding a bit of groundbait over to the island on top of the shelf. Caught odd fish now and again for the first hour. Had about 8 fish after 1 hour. The biggest was a carp about 3lb. Throughout this period the comments flowed between meathead and I, something along the lines of him polishing his quid for me.

After fishing across to the island for about 1 1/2 hours, I could feel that the line was steadily dying, so I started to feed another line in preparation (and the hope that I was going to empty it later), one swim to my left. I deposited a fruitshoot amount of bait in the area that I was planning on dropping my hookbait to empty it. Meathead all but threatened to give me a chappy slap for daring to plumb up and bait an area between the two of us. After sticking to my guns, I dropped the rig in and waited for the float to disappear. My float had drifted past the marker that was agreed (albeit, not mutually) into Meathead's peg. The float buried, and a 6 oz fish was in the net.

The wind changed, it started off straight off my back and had now turned to a south-westerly and was coming from Right to Left. This mean't that I couldn't get the correct presentation across to the island. The 4 x 12 float that I was using was now horizontal and I was having to hold back on the float, this caused the problem of missing the tiny little dips on the float from the bites.

My match continued in this vein until the end of the match.

Magnum on peg 34 weighed in 38llb, he caught well late on (I think that the fish had been pushed/moved into his peg due to the wind). Meathead had 28lb, I ended up with 19lb and Ken Bennet on Peg 37 (I found out his name at last!!) ended up with 30lb. He fished the last 2 hours of the match towards peg 38.

67lb won
64lb 2nd
48lb 3rd
46lb 4th

Lowest section winning weight was 32lb.