If you’ve been reading the preceding 2 or 3 blog entries you’ll know that I started this match at the top of the leaderboard of this year’s Old English Cider festival – tied on points with Chris Haywood and Mo Brown but ahead on overall weight. I’m going to admit that as a result I was properly nervous for the first time ever about fishing a match – after all would I ever get the opportunity again to start a match knowing that all I had to do was win a five peg section to win a White Acres festival (albeit one that is not as significant as the 180 spring and autumn versions)?
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| Acorn* |
The rotation saw my section move onto Acorn and Canal today – 2 sections and 10 anglers on each. Clint held the bag and in went my left hand (with my left foot off the ground) – well it had worked all week so why risk not doing it again? Out came Acorn peg 11 – I was happy with this as I’d fished Acorn in numerous pleasure sessions over the years and had in fact fished the very same peg in a Rover during a week Bagger and myself had had at the end of May. (That day I weighed 53-0-0 – the majority of which came in the first two hours down the edge.)
I’d learned a lot that day – but I knew that I’d have to catch a great deal more than 50 odd pounds to beat venue expert Ricky Lale (who was in my sub-section and sat two pegs to my left on peg 9). Past experience had shown me that catching down the edge would be crucial – however as with many venues things don’t normally kick-off properly in the margins on Acorn until the last 90 minutes or so. As a result my main line attack of initially would be tight to the central island and I once again set-up two rods with matching 30g Preston pellet feeders to fish with 8mm pop-ups or 6mm hard pellets over softened 2mm White Acres fishery pellets.
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| Pole floats used today |
Plan B was the margin and I set-up similar rigs to yesterday – a 0.1g Mo Brown Rio for fishing under my feet and two 4x10 Preston Dura Plus 6s for fishing left and right at top kit plus one section. (All rigs were tied on 0.19 Reflo Power straight through to a size 14 Guru MWG for fishing double worm on the hook.) Pegs 9, 10 and 11 are actually quite wide and there is a reasonable amount of water between the island and the bank – as a result plan C would be the long pole shallow at 13m. I set-up two rigs with 4x10 KC Carpa Shelf floats – one a lighter version with 0.13 mainline into a hooklength of the same with a size 18 Kamasan B911, the other a heavier version with 0.17 mainline into a hooklength of 0.15 into a size 16 B911.
I started on the pellet feeder and I was into a fish no longer than 10 seconds after the hooter had blown – I could see all of the other anglers in my section and for the first three hours I’m sure I was ahead by at least 2 or 3 fish as the fish kept on coming on the pellet feeder.
At around this point the island line started to dry-up dramatically so it was time for the long pole shallow – I wasn’t sure it was going to work but after a few minutes of feeding 6mm pellets and slapping my float on the surface of the water I was soon into a few fish. In total I caught four carp and four good F1s – enough to maintain a section winning position with an hour of the festival to go.
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| Ricky Lale in action on Acorn from a previous year* |
Unfortunately this is the point in what had been a glorious week that the wheels came off – the island line had died, the long pole shallow had dried-up and I simply could not get a bite in the margins (I’d fed a good amount of Sonubait’s Supercrush green to the left at around 1400 and I’d been frequently loose feeding 6mm pellets to my right since the same point). At times I could see good carp over both lines but for one reason or another they wouldn’t take my hookbait. Out of desperation I employed a strict 2 minute rotation between the feeder to the far side, the left margin then the right margin – but I could see Ricky bagging from his left margin and every fish he caught hammered another nail into the coffin of my attempt to secure the title!
By the time the hooter went for the ‘all out’ and Steve appeared with the scales I knew Ricky had beaten me fairly and squarely – and in all fairness no quarter had been asked for and no quarter had been given! (On reflection I was more than happy with my own performance and I couldn’t have tried any harder – I was simply beaten by a better angler on the day!)
Ricky was first to weigh and tipped 77-14-0 onto the scales – my two weighs were close but not good enough as they only pulled the needle around to 70-8-0. News soon filtered through that Chris Haywood had clinched his fourth section win in a row and hence had clinched the festival with a perfect 20 point score. Mo Brown could only produce a third in section dropping him down to a still very credible fifth allowing yours truly to take second, Ramzi King third and Andy Poole fourth.
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| Ramzi King, Chris Haywood and yours truly!* |
The final top ten is:
- Chris Haywood (20 points, 185-10-0)
- Phil Morris (yours turly) (19 points, 319-17-0)
- Ramzi King (19 points, 145-11-0)
- Andy Poole (19 points, 137-1-0)
- Mo Brown (18 points, 256-14-0)
- Ricky Lale (18 points, 214-10-0)
- Kevin Sims (18 points, 178-13-0)
- Les Hills (18 points, 140-10-0)
- Will Sweeney (17 points, 200-2-0)
- Kevin Wingfield (17 points, 175-9-0)
All-in-all I was more than pleased with my second placing – especially as I’d managed 3 sections wins, 3 lake wins and a second, plus the highest individual weight of the week prize!!! Congratulations to Chris who was a very worthy winner – and well done to the rest of the field who have no doubt already started thinking about their plan of attack for next year’s festival already (I know I have)!!!
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| The White Acres Team* |
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Clint, Kirsty, Steve, Karl and Rob for once again organising a great festival – how anybody can even consider moaning about any element of a holiday at White Acres is beyond me! (I would thank Ricky but he was fishing the festival as opposed to running it.)
Roll on next June!!!
Why not follow me on Twitter? @philip_r_morris
*Photos courtesy of facebook and the White Acres website
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