reports

IF you were one of the anglers who fished the weekend’s Intersite match on a very below par Kennet and Avon Canal, you would have been forgiven for thinking I had organised a canal boat regatta, such were the numbers of boats that passed through the Caen Hill Lock system in the first two hours of fishing time.

This is not unusual for this venue and can improve the fishing ten fold on some days, for most, this was not one of those days.
The fishing was hard in most sections and even the top three were not fantastic weights.
On most canals they would be considered good but this place is capable of a lot better, a point confirmed by Pete Thatcher in the weeks running up to the event, and the day before the match when I sat down and took 21 Tench and one big Bream for around 65 pounds. That’s fishing I suppose!

At the draw it was nice to put some faces to names at last, it was good to meet the maggotdrowners, who managed not to moan at me too much (only joking lads & lasses) and the Talk Angling Team who still fished on despite being two short.

There was lots of talk about the fact a certain person would be taking a swim at the end of the day, to be honest I think he is a nice guy, besides, I didn’t fancy the colour of that water for a bath.

The Flyer……………. Some of you will have already seen Pete ( the pegs are too tight) Thatcher’s pictures on the club site and will have noticed the caption next to my picture “C section where Slider blew the flier! “ .

Well in a way he is right, especially considering that it was the next peg the day before that I took 65 pounds from!
On the day the fish just weren’t there and I had to settle for second place, which by the way I was quite happy with.

Ally’s bream net was fantastic, especially on such a bright day. I weighed that net in myself and it was good to see fish of such size in the canal.
On the day though I think credit should go to all section winners and especially Kev Arathoon who was not drawn well and fished a stupidly long pole for most of the day (17.5 metres if my info is correct Kev) to get third place on the day, nice one.

The truth is though that most of the 30 odd field did not have a good day’s fishing and a lot of them had travelled a long way to fish the match so thanks to you all for sitting it out.

Special thanks from my point of view to all of my team and especially Jollyboy “Lee Arnold” (gotta have some breakfast) boy, Pea Belly Edwards, Chopperwild, Chris “Zinky” Royle and Rob Baily “RobB” who all travelled a very long way to fish. Jollyboy, I owe you a tenner.

Results

Individuals

1 Ally, Total-Fishing, 26-13-0
2 Slider Angling Forums, 19-12-0
3 Kev Coke, Maggot Drowners, 18-15-0

Sections
A Rich Char TF
B Steve Mac TF
C A Felton (Default) TA
D B Cooper TA
E F Parker (Default) TA
F M Howard (Default) TA
G K Taylor TF
H Jollyboy AF
I Nick Williams MD
J Paul Rigby AF

Teams on the day

1 Total-Fishing, 25 points
2 Angling Forums, 23 points
3 Maggot Drowners, 20 points
4 Talk Angling, 18 points

A full picture report is on the club site at www.total-fishingclub.com