Southern semi-final action
Angling Times/Bait-Tech Supercup Southern Semi-Final (Sat) Todber Manor, Hill View, Ash, Homeground & White-post (8 teams)
IT WAS a family affair in the Southern leg of this year’s Supercup Semi-Finals, as Kent outfit Team Martin dominated at Todber.
Despite the six-hour round trip to get to the Dorset fishery, they scored 13 points and took three of the top four individual spots with massive weights, just to rub it in.
Made up of Steve, Tommy, Vinnie, Jay and Dan Martin plus Ian Harper, the six anglers posted two sections wins, three seconds and a fifth to stroll home five points in front of former Supercup champions Cwmbran Angling Nobblers. The battle for third and fourth went down to section countback after two teams tied on 21 points.
That was won by Carp Shop as they scored one win through overall winner Michael Head, with Bill’s Tackle settling for fourth. Grabbing the final qualifying spot were Swindon-based Elgin AC.
Despite the travelling, the Team Martin men put in the time to practise, seeing Jay on Homeground Lake and Ian on Hill View post section wins, Dan on Whitepost Lake, Vinnie on Ash and Tommy on Hill View taking seconds and Steve, also at Whitepost, a fifth. The six anglers had almost 1,300lb of fish between them to show just how prolific the Dorset fishery is.
“We’d been down a fair bit and had seen the locals catching 400lb,” said skipper Jay. “Pellet short and in the edge seemed to be the method, but with so many fish to go at, we felt that Todber suited us in terms of letting us fish the methods we were comfortable with. Ideally, we wanted to all have 200lb each on the main site at Todber and then around 100lb on Whitepost. In practice, we’d seen that we could fish a range of methods to catch that.
“I won my section on Homeground Lake fishing paste on a top kit, Vinnie fished the Method feeder all day on Ash, my dad Steve used paste at Whitepost. Dan caught his weight on dead maggot over groundbait in the edge at Whitepost, too, so it wasn’t all about pellets,” he continued. “We found that pellets could produce too many foul hooked fish. You could catch 200lb of carp by feeding less than a pint of pellets, as you didn’t need to pull fish into the peg at the start – they were there ready and waiting!”
361lb TAKES INDIVIDUAL TITLE
The individual race was always going to be a big weight affair, but things were a lot closer than expected as winner Michael Head ended up just over 12lb in front of Tommy Martin as both men banked over 300lb.
Fishery boss John Candy had earmarked Michael’s peg, 54 on Hill View Lake, as one to watch, and from the off the Carp Shop man was catching. But opposite him on peg 49 was Team Martin’s Tommy, matching him fish for fish to see the scales show 361-12-0 for Michael and 349-5-0 for Tommy.
“When my captain told me the peg I was
on, I couldn’t believe it!” Michael said.
“I wanted peg 49 or 54, given how the wind was blowing, and I’d been on peg 49 the week before and seen the guy on 54 empty it, so I had a good idea how to fish the peg.
“Everything was ideal, with the wind going into the bank and lots of room to my left, and it plumbed up perfectly too on the top kit and one line at 3ft just in front of the slope.
“I caught from the word go, but you had to keep busy, feeding three or four 6mm pellets all of the time and constantly lifting and dropping the rig. Most bites came on a banded 6mm pellet, either on the drop or just as the bait settled,” he revealed.
“I could see Tommy beginning to catch me up, so I opened up a margin line and fed heavily with meat. That caught me 70lb in about 45 minutes of fishing, including a 15lb common that ultimately won it for me.”