Blythe Pairs League Saturday 28/4/12

This was the last round of our pairs league which had been re-arranged due to snow in the winter and with club match and other commitments on Sundays had to be arranged for a Saturday, Stav and I were sitting on top of the league with a 10 point margin over the second placed Carl/Chris partnership so if we came no lower than 5th in each of our sections we were on for our 3rd league win on the bounce. We were both keen for a good draw to finish the 8th and final round off with so into the draw bag I went and pulled out peg 30 on the point for me and peg 17 on the straight for Stav which was not a bad draw and we both felt that we could do well from these pegs, I had fished my peg twice this league already with good results both times so I was confident that I could come higher than the target of 5th in the section. As the weather warms up a lot of the fish here are caught shallow from under the boom which I could reach with 14.5m of pole (Stav's peg is 17.5m! nice) I set up 2 shallow rigs and 1 for the deck on this line and 1 for the margin to my right, the 2 shallow rigs one with 0.14 line and 13 hollo elastic and the other with 0.16 line and black hydro elastic just in-case the bigger fish turned up, the deck rig had 0.16 line and 13 hollo elastic and the margin rig had 0.18 line with black hydro.
I started the match on the deck cupping in 4mm pellets and fishing a 6mm expander on the hook I had also fed a pot of dead maggots down my right-hand edge for later, all I had for the first 10-15mins was 3 liners as the fish were already up in the water so an early switch to the shallow rig was called for. Kev Clarke on peg 29 had suffered the same fate as were both switched at the same time and shipped out at the same time and both hooked a fish within 30 seconds of putting the rigs in the water, my fish was around 5lb which fell to a 6mm lassoed hard pellet while feeding 4mm's over the top Kev had chose to fish the worm feeding through the pot so it would be interesting to see which was the best. The next fish shortly after was around the same size and we both had around 6 fish each within an hour of coming shallow from around 1-5lb before the fish decided they had had enough, bites were now not coming at all so after a biteless 20mins shallow I picked up the margin rig and put 3 live maggots on the hook and lowered the rig in I had fed around 3 pots of dead maggots here since the start. After around 5mins the float buried and I was connected to a good fish so I just lowered the top kit into the water and held on hoping the black hydro would do its job and I soon had the fish under control which was a nice 8lb common, 5mins later I hooked another good fish but this time I just came back with a scale as I was sitting sideways I could see Carl catching on peg 3 which was a bit worrying as I needed to beat him or at least not end up too many places behind him. I had rang Stav earlier to see how he was getting on and he had just got a couple of Carp but over the last hour he was now catching quickly up in the water and coming back with a fish most put-ins, this was good as I could see Chris his main target in his section struggling on peg 8 so far it was looking good for us. For the rest of the match I just picked off odd fish shallow from the boom and I did manage another fish of around 8lb from my right-hand margin and ended the match with 16 Carp from 1-8lb while after that early flurry shallow Kev too my left had struggled for bites, Stav had found the going hard for the first hour but for the last 4 hours had caught steady all day and looked like the match winner from where I was sitting. The scales started weighing Stav's section first and Dave on peg 10 was the first to weigh anything of note with 36lb and there was not a lot until Stav, I just managed to get around the pool as he was weighing in his two net total went 95lb and easily won the section and the match. The best in my section was Ray on peg 26 with 35lb then Kev next to me put 27lb on the scales my net went 50lb 12oz which put me into the lead in the section until we got to Carl on peg 3 the last peg in my section and he weighed in 65lb for the section win, that left me 2nd in the section and 3rd in the match overall leaving Stav and I as league winners for the 3rd year on the bounce which we were both very pleased with. All that was left to do was retire to the cafe for the results and chew over the fat of the day over a cup of tea we ended the league 13 points clear of Chris & Carl in 2nd place, 3rd place went to Ray & Dave who snuck in by 1 point in-front of Kev & Tony on the last day putting them back to 4th. Thanks to Carl & JB for running the league and well done to Stav my pairs partner for catching a few fish in the end finally pulling his finger out Cheers Mate!!!!!