- Peg 26 Bridge
- 16lb 4oz
- 12 F1's and 3 small Barbel
- No good.....
Bright sunshine and flat calm
Heronbrook was always going to be tough.
The County Champs final is something that I have always
wanted to get through for the last couple of years. I haven’t been good or lucky enough to get
through to the final in the last couple of years. The semi finals for last couple of years has
been at Hillview, and have been unsuccessful to get through to the final at
Barston.
This is the first year whereby the county champs has had no
semi final, as it used to be the top twenty in your county with the highest
points would go through to semi final at Hillview and the top 5 would go
through from that match. This year only
the top three go through to the final, and the final is at Heronbrook and
Gloucestershire’s finalists were myself, Chris Cameron and Steve Ford. To be honest I did to deserve to be in the
final as Neil Mckinnon would have had more points than me, but he decided not
to register with the Angling Times County Championships and therefore would not
fish County Champs final at Heronbrook, as he was on Preston Innovation
festival at White Acres.
After another painful morning with my gout, I was cutting it
a little fine and arrived at 9.05am (draw time 9.00am) and Chris Cameron (early
bird) had already drawn for us and had three tickets within the envelope and
advised me that I was on Bridge Pool 26, which was apparently a good draw,
however 27 was in the corner, which have been a much more fancied peg. My peg was 13 meters wide which made life
easy fishing and decided to have 3 lines of attack on the far bank, however the
depth were all over the place, to my left it was 4ft deep tight to the far
bank, in front was 2ft and to my left was 2.5 ft. So plenty of time to prepare for my fishing
match, I had several rigs set up to combat with the different depths. Chris Cameron had drawn peg 2 on Meadow and
Steve Ford was on the match lake.
I was prepared for a hard fishing match, and I knew that
50lb would be a good weight on Bridge Pool and 70lb would be mega. However, my match didn’t go to plan as bites
were at premium even through a worked hard and hoped the fish would turn up and
turn on the last hour which they simply didn’t and unfortunately my 12 small
F1’s and 3 barbel for 16lb put me nowhere.
I do believe that the peg was worth forty pounds. The mistakes I made:
·
Should of feed red maggots and not bronze.
·
Should of carried on dripping six 4mm pellets
and not feed micro’s or a full small
“toss top”.
·
Shouldn’t of feed meat and hemp on my left
inside margin (should of been maggots again)
·
Should of practiced on the venue.
Well, will have to wait until next year now???
Well Done to Pete Caton, Jon Arthur and Kevin Fowell for winning the event with 27 points.
