Team Total-Fishing.com (Southern) v Koi Ponds
Team Total-Fishing.com South were beaten at the weekend, fair and square, on an out of sorts River Wey.
Well done to our opponents, Koi Ponds, who now progress to the 2nd round and hopefully onto better things.
It was a good match, fished in superb weather considering it is October, in good company too.
Expectations took a bit of a knock at the draw as we drew the section we had practised the weekend before in which we recorded two blanks out of four fishing!
Great weather but not great fishing on the Wey.
This was the section we DIDN’T want. It was decided Nick and Mike would fish the pegs they had practised but we knew Nick would be hard pushed to get anything from a very poor end of the river, while Mike had one of the better pegs on the stretch down stream of the bridge.
Mike started well, putting lots of small (but very welcome) roach and dace in the net fishing pole at 8m down the track over hemp and maggot, alternating hook baits of maggot and caster.
Things looked grim all along the section even without a bank runner it was obvious looking at the line of ‘gnomes’ that not much was being caught.
On the peg upstream of Mike one of the Koi Ponds lads was putting fish in his net regular but they were a very small stamp of mainly roach on the waggler.
After about 3 hours Nick decided to go ‘walkabout’ to see how everyone was doing. On his return he informed our team that one of the Koi lads had a pike in his net of at least 3lb.
We knew that this was indeed a BIG BONUS fish for any team given the conditions. Steve M, Pete and Steve R were on the upstream side of the bridge and were only picking up odd roach and dace.
On a bright and sunny day those three pegs were always in the shade and there was a definite drop in temperature which the fish just didn’t like. Things didn’t look too rosy! After the third hour Mike stopped catching and no matter what he did he couldn’t buy a bite.
It seemed it was one of those days that you could only catch what was in front of you, which wasn’t a lot for most of the competitors.
Suddenly with about 20 mins to go Pete hooked into a ‘match winner’. A pike of about 5 or 6 pounds – things were looking up?
Alas his line parted and the fish swam to freedom without even knowing it was hooked Pete was obviously a tad upset at loosing this match winner but ‘That’s Fishing’!
The team tried just about everything from maggot, caster, pinkie, chopped worm and even a desperate look on a liquidised bread and hemp line but to no avail.
On the weigh in it looked close even with Koi having a pike, it was a little to close to call. Nick was first to weigh for us, or should I say he was first ‘not’ to weigh – he blanked. There was a Koi blank to his right and just one fish (9oz perch) to his left. Mike was expecting about 3lb+ of bits and was pleasantly surprised to put 7lb 8oz on the scales which put him third overall on the day. Next to weigh in was the Koi Ponds angler upstream of the bridge. He had about 6lb 8oz of bits plus the 3lb+ pike which put his weight at 9lb 15oz and from that point on it was obvious that the pike had swung the match Koi’s way.
Steve R had a very difficult day with only 5oz and Pete put 1lb 1oz 8dr of well earned fish on the scales.
Last to weigh was Steve Mac who recorded a weight of 1lb 11oz 8dr again from a difficult peg .
Back to the pub to drown our sorrows but we all agreed despite a difficult days fishing we had enjoyed ourselves and that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day…enjoying yourself!
Total-Fishing (South)
Steve McCrory (Captain) 1lb 11oz 8dr
Pete Thatcher 1lb 1oz 8dr
Steve Rowland 5oz
Nick Merry Blank
Mike Jameson 7lb 8oz
Team: 10lb 10oz
Koi Ponds 12lb
Mike Jameson
