The final day of the festival and it was crunch time. At this point I should perhaps stress that if this is the first blog of the festival you are reading, it would be better to navigate to the first day via the archive on the right, to follow it from the beginning ;)
We were finishing as we had started the week, on the Bonsai Lake and today I had brought my Grandad with me for the day out. He’s 91 and it’s been ages since he’s watched me fish, I was hoping he would bring me a bit of luck. An equal or better score than Craig Elkin would guarantee me second, and I could even win it depending how Andy Bennett did. I could not see Andy slipping up on this lake today though and he was out for revenge after yesterday.
Out came peg 81, which as the festival pegging went, was the next one along to 78 which I had on Monday. I was initially happy, until I realised the wind direction and the people in my section. 81 is towards the car park end of the lake and the wind was blowing to my left down the lake into the 70s. I feared it may have pushed a lot of fish down there. On 78 was John Allerton, on 74 was Paul Wright and on 72 was Nick Speed, all these anglers had won at least two sections and framed during the week so far. First job was to set my Grandad up at the side of me, with a great big carp chair and a brolly to keep him in the shade!
We were finishing as we had started the week, on the Bonsai Lake and today I had brought my Grandad with me for the day out. He’s 91 and it’s been ages since he’s watched me fish, I was hoping he would bring me a bit of luck. An equal or better score than Craig Elkin would guarantee me second, and I could even win it depending how Andy Bennett did. I could not see Andy slipping up on this lake today though and he was out for revenge after yesterday.
Out came peg 81, which as the festival pegging went, was the next one along to 78 which I had on Monday. I was initially happy, until I realised the wind direction and the people in my section. 81 is towards the car park end of the lake and the wind was blowing to my left down the lake into the 70s. I feared it may have pushed a lot of fish down there. On 78 was John Allerton, on 74 was Paul Wright and on 72 was Nick Speed, all these anglers had won at least two sections and framed during the week so far. First job was to set my Grandad up at the side of me, with a great big carp chair and a brolly to keep him in the shade!
My mind was made up on fishing the same match as Monday as peg 81 is almost identical, although the peg is wider and requires the absolute full 16m to touch the far side reeds, where there was one gap. It’s also deeper than 78 and is a very good winter draw. Weirdly my match started identically to Monday, although I had discounted worms and went straight across to the island with meat. This produced two small carp in as many puts but in 2.5ft of water, the shallowest I could get, the liners started. I picked up the catty and caught an odd fish shallow, but it seemed very steady fishing for everyone. Going into the second hour sport picked up a bit and then after another half hour I was catching very regularly. Although I was getting an odd 2lb common or mirror, I was getting a lot of smaller F1s which live in the 80s but going with the mentality I had kept all week, I just ploughed on and kept putting something in the sprout sack!
My Grandad wasn’t too enthralled by the amount of fish coming out as at one point he fell asleep in his chair! My only concern was my mate Speedy as Grandad kept telling me that he was catching well too. With an hour to go I decided to feed my edge line to the platform of peg 80. I had nothing to lose by doing this but I had seen the big fish which came in on this line on Monday. I was just about to ship out my shallow rig again when out of the corner of my eye I saw a swirl over the groundbait. Ever the opportunist, a quick change of rigs and a cube of meat was lowered into the edge, after 30 seconds it went and I was soon netting an 8lb mirror.
After catching that fish so quickly I was thinking ‘can this match go any better’. But at that point things started to go horribly wrong. With even more enthusiasm I went back down the edge, with dreams of catching 50lb of lumps in the last hour. Every time I fed there were swirls but I didn’t have it quite right and I think the lack of cover and sun was not making the fish very confident and over the next half hour I put just a few barbel and tench in the net. I had kept the shallow line fed and when I went on it again I caught two fish straight away, then I noticed more tail patterns in the edge. I got caught in the edge trap once again and before I knew it there was only five minutes of the match left. Another 8lber right on time was a little consolation but I was very annoyed with myself. In fact I wish I’d never caught that first 8lber as it threw me completely. I should have stopped on the shallow line. The big question now was would it cost me?
Nick Speed was admitting to 130lb and although I knew I had 100lb-plus, I wasn’t sure how much over that I was, owing to the different sizes of fish I had caught. News soon came through that Andy Bennett had paralysed his section with 195lb from peg 21. A super weight from a peg which is either devoid or solid with fish. I now realised I couldn’t win the festival but hoped to hang on to second. Nick Speed weighed 133lb from peg 72, but when I had to have him help me lift my first net out, overloaded with about 90lb, I knew I was going to overcome that. A total of 159lb 1oz and another third in the match. Lee Kerry completed the top three with 173lb from peg 65.
As it stood I had tied on Andy Bennett with a perfect four point score, but when the dropped result came into play as I knew it would, his second compared to my third was enough for him to take the title. He fished inexplicably well all week and deserved the win and £1000 first prize, well done mate! I was more than happy with my week’s work and went home more than a few quid up with an overall second, four section prizes plus a second and two third in matches. Now I can’t wait for next year and think I might do both the spring and summer events.
Festival Result
1. A Bennett (Daiwa Guru Bait-Tech) 4pts (dropping 2)
2. B Fisk (Middy) 4pts (3)
3. C Elkin (Matrix) 6pts (3)
4. J Corless (Bolton) 6pts (4)
5. R Lidgard (Brigg AC) 7pts
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