“THE FINAL RESULT SURPRISED EVEN ME”

FEW matches are bigger than the Winter League Final. Joining my Drennan Barnsley Blacks team mates in the Fens for this year’s final, our only goal was to win. I was off to one of the small drains with a section win my target.

The weather was blowing a hooley but I was cheered up when captain Glenn Lawrence handed me a peg near the bridge on the Twenty Foot Drain near March.

There are lots of fish to catch here but I felt I could struggle to beat the pegs right next to the bridge. If I managed that, though, I’d got a great shot at winning the section outright.

Tactics were going to be short on a 2.5m whip and, if need be, longer at 6m. That longer pole swim was in the wind so I was hoping the whip would produce all day – it did!

Starting shallow for rudd, after 20 minutes I changed to putting the bait on the bottom as the fish were tiny. Feeding groundbait with choppie and maggots to pull in bigger fish and using three or four pinkies under a 2g rig, it was a fish every cast – a lot of them perch.

I managed to stay at 2.5m or slightly further out at 3m for the whole match and guessed on having around 450 fish. My concern was that I hadn’t caught enough of the right-sized fish to do well, but when the scalesman called 13kg, it surprised even me. The anglers by the bridge had struggled and I’d got enough to win the section and the match across all the drains. The day got even better when we got back to HQ and added up our scores. Winter League champions again!

“It was a fish a cast, a lot of them perch, too ”