Evesham Festival August 2014. Bank Holiday Monday Team Match

The bank holiday Monday August team match is the finale of the Evesham Festival and consists of fourteen teams, which are a mixture of invited and qualifying teams. My team Maver Image were fortunate enough to be one of the invited ones, fortunate, as qualifying for this final is not a straight forward prospect. It is a great event as there is tackle show, a bookie and other entertainment occurring in the Crown Meadow behind the early numbers. These attractions draw a decent head of spectators, with the prospect of seeing some competitive team angling to boot.

The standard of the teams and anglers is extremely good with many of the current (and past) Drennan Team England squad on show. The top teams in the country were all present and the ‘Big 3’ of Dorking, Starlets and Barnsley were all there. In fact it was actually a ‘Big 4’ as Starlets had 2 teams entered! The only thing to put a literal dampener on the day was the weather, with persistent rain making it uncomfortable for anglers and spectators alike.

The interesting thing about this match was the small team size (teams of five) as opposed to the usual eight or ten man teams. One way of looking at this is that the ‘smaller’ teams could put out a stronger team as less strength in depth is required, but on the flip side the ‘big’ teams could put out an uber strong team of superstars. So I’m not sure if this was to the benefit or detriment to any of the teams. Our team of five was Gary Miller, Peter Vasey, James Drakulic, Danny Grimsey & myself. We also had our team manager Syd Wilson and squad member John Weeden to run the bank. The team was picked firmly with bloodworm fishing in mind and was arguably our strongest five anglers at this. We have all done loads of bloodworm fishing especially on hard canals and were hopeful that this would stand us in good stead for this challenge. Also, Gary Miller is an ex Wychavon Champ and himself and Peter Vasey have had Evesham success in the past with the original match fishing super team; Van Den Eyne Essex County.

After looking at the match results of the preceding two days competitions, it was clear that the fishing was not just hard, but very, very hard, with countless DNWs and weights of less than a pound on both days. The river had been very low and clear and coupled with the enormous amount of angling pressure as well, it appeared to have switched off. There is one big difference though in that the preceding days matches had all been individual matches, whereas a team match means that a whole different mind-set and approach is required.

Ok, so to the most important part of any fishing match, the draw. Over the years I have become a big believer in luck (in both fishing and in life in general) playing a massive outcome on one’s path. I am absolutely convinced that given ten different draw bag scenarios, you’ll get different results and often HUGELY different results. This is what makes fishing so unpredictable in that you could possibly have one of the worst match anglers in the world beating one of the best; if the ‘gods of luck’ are assisting the lesser angler. Anyway, back to the match and the guys were very keen for me to do the draw (apparently lucky ...hmmmm…) and with all of this peer pressure I couldn’t say no. For once we were fairly near to the start of the draw and were about 5^th to draw I think, which gave me the dilemma of lots of envelopes still to pick. I vividly remember picking one that seemed to be staring at me and asking me to pick it, as it was slightly on top of one of the other envelopes. Despite thinking it may be trying to bluff me I picked it and it turned out to be team draw number 5 and gave us the following sequence of pegs (I think I've got some of these wrong, my memory is poor!).

Peg 5 – Me

Peg 18 – Peter Vasey

Peg 35 – James Drakulic
Peg 49 – Gary Miller
Peg 64 – Danny Grimsey

The obvious stand out peg was peg 35, this was on the mouth of where the River Isbourne joins the River Avon. On the Saturday it had produced a winning weight of chub to Lee Edwards who had fished the waggler and maggots. James Drakulic had drawn this peg and I have seen James at close quarters over the last few years and at 22 he is an exceptional talent. He has been for a couple of England trials and has been unsuccessful, which means that we must have a frighteningly good crop of young anglers in this country if he cannot get in. Great for the future. Back to peg 35 and it is by no means a ‘gimme’, as the chub do not always show, which was shown by the Sunday result from this peg. It could actually be a tricky one, because you have to try for the chub and if they don’t show, you’ll be behind on bloodworm fish for sure. Gary Miller’s verdict was that it looked like a reasonable draw and Syd Wilson’s ‘dossier’!!! confirmed the same and we all went away content to our pegs.

My peg was number 5 in Crown Meadow and when I arrived at my peg, it became evident that we had drawn between Dorking (upstream) and Bait tech (downstream). More specifically my upstream neighbour was ex World Champion and Drennan Team England angler William Raison. I’m not sure who the Bait-tech lad was downstream of me. In fact it transpired that I had three current England internationals and two World Champions in my section (Sean Ashby, Lee Kerry and William!). This was as high a standard team match as anywhere domestically.

Gary Miller had drawn peg 4 on the Saturday Wychavon Championships and told me that my peg is set out slightly further than peg 4 which would give me an obvious advantage over my neighbour. His overall consensus was that some of the pegs to my right could be better and also peg one, as it was an end peg. Whenever I have fished Evesham before I have always fished off a top four or five, however, this peg was appreciably shallower at 4.5-5 foot and consequently had a small amount of flow. I have to admit that it looked appealing, despite the water clarity being clear.

Our team mantra was to fish for bites and to keep putting fish, whatever their size, into the net. Fishing for big fish would only occur out of desperation. It was clear that they had not been showing the prior two days, so we were not stacking the odds in our favour by fishing for these. Even though we expected it to be a bloodworm, small fish affair, we all set up lots of tackle to cover all eventualities. Specifically, I set up a 5m line for bloodworm, a 13m line for bloodworm, a 14.5m line for hemp, an 11m line down my peg for chopped worm, a waggler and a maggot feeder/bomb line.

I set up a 0.6 gram rig for five metres, where I fed 50mls of joker in five balls of 25% ground bait and 75% soil. Here I was simply hoping to get bites. The 13m line was where I anticipated spending the majority of my day and here I assembled 2 rigs. Firstly, a positive bulked down 1 gram olivette rig, which would allow me to see bites quickly and also fish quicker. I also set up a 0.6 gram rig, should there be more quality fish present and better presentation being the name of the game. My 14.5m hemp line was a throwaway line, where I would simply loose feed 8-10 grains of hemp throughout the day on this line. I was optimistic of catching a few fish on it though as Gary Miller had 8 late hemp fish from peg 4 on the Saturday. The rig was a 0.4 gram strung out pattern, which was set just off the bottom.

It was nice to have a couple of hours at my peg to set up, as I am notoriously slow at setting up (and packing up!). Not only was there a lot of gear to assemble, but it also gave me ample time to run my rigs through and to get them behaving exactly how I required them too. This boosted my confidence nicely before the all in.

As the clock ticked towards the 11am start, I made my balls up in advance for the 13m line. We had discussed that even though the fishing was rock hard, balling in would still be the way to go, as the initial noise could draw fish in and give you a flying start. This also fitted into my previous Evesham experiences, where I have always had an early burst of fish after balling, before bite less monotony ensued! I balled in 8 jaffas of soil and ground bait with an 80:20 ratio of soil to ground bait, with just a pinch of joker in. I then cupped in 8 smaller balls with 125ml of joker in a 60:40 ratio of soil to ground bait. The theory behind this being that the initial bombardment would provide noise attraction to any fish in the area, with very little feed in it. The fish would then hone in on the precisely placed 8 balls of attractive cupped in bait. Right on cue as the match started the heavens opened and rain of biblical proportions remained for the rest of the day.

First put in on my 13m line I had a bite! ……. which I missed. Next run through I hooked a fish that immediately came towards the surface only to be instantly grabbed by a Pike which emerged from the depths in a blink of the eye! After a brief tussle I was one hook length down and slightly annoyed. Although, to be fair Syd Wilson’s dossier did mention Pike were often a problem in this peg so I couldn’t be surprised! Throughout the first hour I hooked plenty of fish, although most were tiny (about three to the ounce) which was obviously not the stamp that I was looking for. Every time I hooked something better it was taken by a Pike and they were even taking some of my tiny fish, which is really unusual in my experience. The difficulty I was having was that many of the Pike attacks were occurring directly over my feed, which meant that I had no chance of steering them away from the jaws of death. After hour 1, I’d had 6 Pike on and was shipping back like a maniac to try and land something!

Comparing myself to the others in sight, it seemed like I was the only one with Pike trouble. The Bait-Tech angler to my right was catching much better than me. He wasn’t catching quickly, but all of his fish were of a cracking stamp and unless my eyes deceived me, he’d had a 12 ounce roach too. William to my left appeared to be catching regularly, but his fish were tiny in stamp like mine.

At this point I decided that it was time to rest the long line and switch attention to the short line. Here I topped up with lots of ‘tinies’ over the next 30 minutes, which meant I was very slowly adding weight to my net. Throughout this time I was metronomically pinging hemp onto my 14.5m line. Evesham is unique in that every hour a guy walks along asking every angler what they have caught and from their responses (presumably) tries to work out a ‘live’ team position, which is subsequently announced over the tannoy system. The top individuals in each section are also announced, so you do have a fair idea of what is going on. At this stage the perceived front runners were the 2 Starlets team and Barnsley. Apart from my 6 Parkdean final appearances, I rarely get to fish in front of a crowd and today was no different, as they were all watching William next door!! Quite understandably though, as he is an international and a World Champion!

Anyway back to the fishing and another try on my 13m line resulted in plenty of bites, but again from mainly tiny fish. I was now finding the odd ‘better’ fish of around an ounce which made me feel like my weight was sort of ticking over. More importantly, I’d sussed out a pike avoidance tactic! I I bought the fish right upstream before shipping back and I seemed to be guiding them around old esox, which were seemingly sitting directly in front of me.

Both of my short and long lines appeared to die half way through the day and I topped up both with a joker rich ball of soil. To my surprise, I had a nice burst of slightly better roach and perch on the 5m line, which again made me feel like I was ticking over. These didn’t last for long though and I had to keep rotating the long and short bloodworm lines to keep bites coming. I’d now started to catch a few gudgeon on my long bloodworm line too, which seemed to be bigger than the micro roach. It’s not often you describe gudgeon as ‘bonus fish’! I also had a quick look on the hemp line, although I didn’t have a bite.

The Baitech angler to my right seemed to have slowed up, but was well ahead of me due to the stamp of fish he had caught early doors, meanwhile William was still catching the ‘tinies’ and had tried the waggler without too much success. Team manager Syd has also been up and had delivered some encouraging news, in that he felt that we were all in the top halves of our sections, with James Drakulic winning his. It gave me a great boost to hear that we were in the mix and I was determined to scrape every last dram from my peg.

There was now only half an hour left and on went a grain of hemp and out to 14.5 metres of my Browning Z10 pole I shipped. This time something totally different happened in that the float trundled a few metres downstream before shooting away and I was attached to a decent fish! Gingerly I guided it upstream fearing that jaws would grab it any second. Fortunately it didn’t occur and a 6 ounce red fin was sitting in my net. I always feel that with baits like hemp, getting the first bite is the hardest thing and so it proved as over the remaining duration of the match I hooked another 9 hemp fish, landing 6 and losing 3 to Pike before the all-out sounded. Agonisingly, I’d lost a 4 ouncer in the last minute of the match to a Pike that snatched it inches from my net! All in all I’d lost 12 fish to Pike during the match, but I have learnt to be philosophical about things which are out of your control. Word on the bank was that the guys to my right, in the middle of the section had caught very well. Also, Lee Kerry on peg 2 had apparently got a decent weight and I felt that I may be battling it out for halfway at best.

The tannoy continued to give ‘live’, but now ‘actual’ results as the match was being weighed in and I clearly heard that after the weighing of the bottom 3 sections we were in the lead, which was brilliant and slightly unexpected, as the announcer had not mentioned that we were in the running all day. Anyway, as the scales arrived at me, there had been 3 ‘big’ weights which I had no hope of beating. Adrian Higginbottom on peg 8 with 14lb, Sean Ashby on peg 15 with 11-4-8 and the Baitech lad downstream of me with 7lb odd. Adrian and Shaun also took 1^st and 2^nd in the match incidentally. I pulled my net out and had loads of fish, but most of which were tiny. I seemed to have either tiny fish of under half an ounce or fish of over 3 ounces (my 7 hemp fish) and nothing in between, which is very unusual. My weight of 4-9-8, put me 4^th in the section with 3 anglers still to weigh in, one of which was Lee Kerry on peg 2 who was sure to beat me. Various people were doing the number crunching and it now appeared that things were going to be really close between ourselves and Barnsley. William had 2lb odd upstream of me, whilst Lee weighed in between 8-10lb (I can’t remember) which pushed me down to 5^th in my 14 man section. Things were now really tight as both Barnsley and Starlets had taken points off me in the section. Fortunately peg 1 weighed in 3lb odd, which meant that I hadn’t dropped any further points.

We were all a bit unsure of the final outcome as the tannoy didn’t seem to continue announcing the results, although various people felt that we had the verdict by 1 or 2 points. We couldn’t find team manager Syd Wilson to ask, as he had been noting every result down from the sections …. WHERE WAS SYD?? Well it transpired that Syd had hot footed it to the bookies as he knew we’d won and had £20 each way on us at 12/1 and was keen to pick up his £340 before the bookie did one!!

Our final points tally was 55 points, made up as follows:

James Drakulic 1^st 14 points (3^rd overall in match)

Danny Grimsey 3^rd 12 points

Gary Miller 5^th 10 points

Me 5^th 10 points

Peter Vasey 6^th 9 points

It goes without saying that we were overjoyed with the outcome. It also means that the team has had a decent year so far after winning the Sensas Challenge Final UK qualifier on the Ouse at Littleport in March.

Overall team result:

Maver Image 55 points

Starlets 54 points

Barnsley 51 points

It has since been said that we managed to line up the best set of pegs, but as everyone knows you need to have lady luck on your side in match fishing and I’m sure that many team matches are won off of the best draw, so it’s pretty inconsequential really. Long may it continue!

Sunday 15th December 2013. Angling Trust Winter League London Division Final Round. Grand Union Canal, Milton Keynes

I've not found the time to update my blog for over 5 years now, however, I was particularly keen to write about this match as it is likely to be the last ever Angling Trust London Winter League match in the history of the World!

The league is likely to fold next year as 2 teams are dropping out, which has caused my team (Maver Image) to apply to join the East Midlands Winter league. I have fished the London league for about the last ten years, originally with Browning Wickford and now with Maver Image. During this time the league has mainly revolved around canal fishing, although odd forays have been made to 'alien' venues such as the rivers Lea and Cam, as well as commercial fisheries in Willow Park and Tingrith. Normally the one year experiment has been enough on these venues and the following year it has been six rounds on the canals again!

Throughout this period of time I have travelled most weeks with my travelling partner Danny Grimsey and with nearly every round between 70 and 120 miles away, I hate to think the number of miles that we have clocked up. The early days of the league were the most memorable for me as there were eight teams in the league back then (as opposed to five now). One of which being the UK's first professional team in Essex County VDE. Before they disbanded, they won the league every year during the time in which I have been competing. I do remember one year when our young and very keen Wickford team took them to the final round at Willow Park, where they just pipped us by one point, I think.

The canal venues themselves have always been a great attraction for me. After reading Kim Milsom's 'Match Angling Plus' blogs, these were venues that I always wanted to fish, especially if I was fishing against Essex County and the heroes that their squad possessed. They were also the team that I wanted to fish for, especially as I am from Essex. Unfortunately I never actually did though!

It is a real shame that the league is folding, but I feel that many anglers cannot be bothered to put in the effort and/or learn the skills required to fish these venues and just fish commercials all year round. They are missing out though as it is pretty much impossible to ship your pole back through dog shit on a commercial fishery! Seriously though, the thing that has always captured me is arriving at your peg on a canal and not knowing what you are going to catch. These venues are not fished regularly and you could catch anything, (or nothing) it is exciting not actually knowing. Generally on a commercial you know that a carp between 3 and 8 pound will be on the end when the float disappears. Peoples expectations have now been raised higher as a result of commercials and i think that many will no longer tolerate catching 80 fish for 2lb. Don't get me wrong I love commercials, they can offer some fantastic fishing and I spend loads of time on them, however, I couldn't fish them all of the time.

Going back to the reasons why the league is folding, the few young match anglers that do come into the sport inevitably just fish commercials. This is where the big money finals are and they will generally catch their first fish from a commercial anyway (James Drakulic in our team is an exception to this rule and is good enough for the under 23 squad in my opinion). Therefore, you are never going to find new up and coming teams that fish natural venues being created.

The other downfall of the league is that it is very competitive. We have had various teams come and go in the league, some of these because they are making up the numbers. The fact is that people like to win and if they're not competing they'll lose interest and leave instead of trying to improve. It's a sad fact, but that is just life I'm afraid and I can understand it to a certain extent actually.

I may have given the impression earlier that these canal venues are like a 'lucky dip', where you just don't know what you are going to catch next, but this is not the case and in recent years the fishing has deteriorated. The fish populations seem to be changing, which is definitely offering less consistent fishing. Maybe I'm looking through rose tinted glasses, but in my early days of fishing the league there seemed to be roach all of the way through. Whereas now there seem to more bigger fish, like carp, bream and perch, which are often localised around features and get walked to end pegs etc. This can cause a feast or famine situation, especially in a 5 peg section. Our best angler and ex Drennan Knockout Cup Champ Gary Miller has been last in his section twice this year, which underlines this point I think.

A further reason for the difficulty in finding decent boundaries to fish, has been caused by the increase in boats. Apparently in central London, canals are totally banged out with boats now and you'd have no hope of getting 50 pegs in (that's not to mention safety issues and the lack of parking!)
I've noticed that there seems to be more boats around the Milton Keynes area this year too, maybe it's to do with house prices being so high that more people are actually choosing to live on boats!?

Ok that's enough rambling about the history of the league and onto the match itself, let me set the scene. This was a very 'important' match as the league was finely poised. Sensas Oakwood were winning the league by a point, from ourselves (Maver Image) and a further point behind ourselves were Garbolino Blackhorse. The way that the winter league works is that the top two teams go through to fish a semi final against other qualifying teams from the south of England.Two semi final venues are chosen by the Angling Trust and the winning team from each league choose their venue and the 2nd place team go to the other venue. Typically, a natural venue and a commercial fishery is chosen and this year was no exception. The venues were both attractive propositions this year, one being Colemans Cottage, which is a great venue and only fifteen minutes from my house! The other being the Kennet & Avon canal, which has been a semi final before and one which my teams have always qualified from.

Ok, so the final round of our league was to be held on the Grand Union Canal in Milton Keynes. Specifically, the sections were split between Rogues Lane to New Bradwell and Deans Road. The draw itself was being held at the 'Super Sausage Cafe' in Potterspury and has to be the best cafe that I have ever been to! After a 5 am start, a good fry up is a must to get you 'match fit'! Our team for the day was as follows:

Steve Clark (captain)
Andy Mead
Chris Vandervleit
John Weeden
Danny Grimsey
James Drakulic
Peter Vasey
Martin Foster
Steve Joy
Me

Plus we were 'guided' expertly by our team manger Syd Wilson. Unfortunately we were missing our strongest angler Gary Miller, who has recently become a Dad and was on 'baby duty'.

The practice match indicated that it would be a small fish affair and could be peggy in areas, as the canal was certainly clearer than normal. MK generally holds a tinge of colour which means that fish often remain well spread. 3-4lb was our target weight for 'good' points (1st or 2nd in section). Before the draw everyone received a pep talk from 'the emperor' Pete Vasey, as he is widely acknowledged to be one of the best at this style of fishing. This is quite unusual for our team, as normally we simply attack our pegs as we see fit, however, this was likely to be a 'method' water so it was important that everyone was on the same wave length with regards to lines to fish and also quantities of bait to feed.

The draw was made and it was time to talk through our pegs. On paper it appeared that we had drawn reasonably and had hopefully avoided any horrendous pegs. Fortunately, for myself I had drawn the end peg to the left of Deans Road. End pegs are always a big advantage on canals and this draw was merely a continuation of my good drawing fortune in the league. I had already managed 3 end pegs to date in preceding winter league rounds/practice matches! As a result some good natured 'banter' was flying around from my team mates, r.e greedily taking the teams best peg again, but not actually in those words if you know what I mean! It's always great to draw decent pegs, but the pressure to do well comes with that. I always think that it's important to win your section off an end peg or you've dropped points for the team.

My travelling partner Danny had drawn on the boats at New Bradwell, which was likely to be an ok section on paper, although he did have an end peg to contend with in his section. He dropped me off at Deans Road and I soon arrived at my peg. To look at it was a typical non descript bit of canal with concrete banks and just a few brambles protruding from the far bank. Although with not an angler in sight to my left I was very optimistic about proceedings.

My first job was to prepare my joker. Pete Vasey had managed to source some Belgian (same as polish) joker, which is becoming almost impossible to obtain these days. We had also ordered the 'standard' Russian joker as a back up . The reason why the Belgian is preferable is due to it being bigger, more lively and consequently easier to hook. For these reasons it is thought to me more enticing to roach and perch too.

In an ideal world I'd have got my joker the day before to allow myself to prepare it adequately, however, I wasn't driving to London to pick it up, so I'd have to sort it on the bank. I immediately riddled it to remove the dead and then put a small amount of the live stuff onto a very fine joker riddle. The small joker goes through the riddle and leaves the largest joker on top of the mesh. These are what I use as hookers and when the fish do not want to eat a bloodworm can be a killer bait.

Whilst the joker was going through the riddle I plumbed up 6 lines. Line number 1 was fished at 1 o'clock, at 5 joints. Here I expected to catch Perch on bloodworm. Line number 2 was at 6 joints in the deepest water to fish the bread. Line number 3 was at 10.5 metres, just going up the far shelf, here I would fish bloodworm and joker in double leam. Line number 4 was a lobworm line at 13 metres towards the empty canal to my left and at the bottom of the far shelf in the deepest water. Line number 5 was in 3 feet of water at 11 o'clock at 12 metres to fish over raw joker. Finally line number 6 was at the same depth and distance but at 2o'clock. This was a 'spare' line and was not fed at the start and could be fed if/when needed, when I knew how the canal was fishing.

I should mention that in my section from the 'main' rival teams was Gary Eales from Oakwood on peg 5 and Lee Newsome from Blackhorse on peg 3. Back to the match and in the first hour I managed caught 3 8 ounce skimmers on the bread, plus 15-20 small roach. My general rule of thumb on canal matches is if you get a bite on bread in the first 5 minutes, you'll have a decent day and very often it rings true. I also managed a 'big burglar' of 1.5lb on my first drop in on the lob and one of a pound shortly later. A smattering of chublets and small perch came to my net in between. This gave me a good 4lb at the end of the first 1.5 hours and a perfect start, especially as there didn't seem to be too much of any significance being caught in the rest of the section. I decided to feed another lobbie line 13 metres to my right, in the same depth and at the bottom of the far shelf, which is always the sign of a good day.

At around this point 'team manager' Syd Wilson approached, as he was running all of the Deans Road sections. Amid much 'effing and jeffing', told me that I had to win my section as the team had a very poor start and were already playing catch up, as he felt we were 3rd overall. A result which could possible see us not qualify.

For the next hour I worked the bread line, the lobworm line and the short b/j line, which kept me ticking over, although there no signs of any further bonus fish. A boat charging through the inside of my peg put paid to those lines and at the half way mark it was time to look across, which had had a nice rest for 2.5 hours.

By rotating the 10.5 metre double leam line and 12 metre raw line, I was able to keep bursts of small roach and perch coming to my net for the next hour or so. Topping up the double leam line a couple of times with reasonably joker rich egg sized balls kept the fish coming. The light was now fading and it had started to rain quite heavily too as the last hour approached. I re-fed the lobworm lines and also the bread line, as the lower light levels often mean that a late bonus can be caught.

These late bonus fish did materialise and in the next hour caught 5 more Perch between 12 ounces and 1.5lb on my original lob worm line. It can often be a problem keeping 'big' Perch on the hook, however I was winning 7-0, which is quite unusual. Murphy's Law dictates that if you hook only 1 during the day and really need it, that's when it'll come off! It's happened to me before a few times.

Whenever I needed to top this line up, I was able to get a fish every put in on either my raw line or double leam line. These were 'only' small Roach and Perch, but kept me nicely ticking over. At the final whistle and at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable day, I'd bagged 7 lobworm Perch, 2 bread skimmers and 95 bloodworm fish for 13lb 12 ounces. This was enough for a section win from Blackhorse's Lee Newsome in second. Unfortunately, in the other Deans Road sections the news was not so good, as we'd struggled overall, with a few average-poor pegs to blame. Conversely, down the other end of the match we'd fared excellently which gave us a real liquorice all sorts of results. Danny had also won his section and had included a fine specimen roach of 1lb 9 ounces in his net, caught on bloodworm! Ironically, a few years back I also caught a 'massive' roach on the same tactics from almost the same peg. I wonder if it is the same fish?

We'd actually amassed 5 section wins, but that only gave us a total of 36 points. Fortunately, I'd won the match individually, which I'm not ashamed to say I was very pleased about as it is likely to be my final London Winter League match ever. However, I'm realistic and know that many of the competitors would have also won from the peg. The power of an end peg can never be underestimated. As it was lashing down with rain I couldn't be bothered to get a picture of my catch, although of course I wish I did now!

The most important thing was the team result though and our 36 points was 2nd on the day, with Oakwood amassing 38 points to win on the day. Blackhorse were 3rd with 34 points. This meant that Oakwood were crowned deserved champions. I think I am right in saying that it is the first time that they have won the league in 20 years of trying, so no one can begrudge them this win.Oakwood have chosen the Kennet & Avon canal as their semi final venue, which leaves us with Colemans Cottage. I'd expect this to be a very close semi final as most of the teams that qualify these days, exclusively fish commercials, so everyone knows the methods required. The draw will probably be the deciding factor on the day. The great thing about Colemans for me personally, is that it is a whole 15 minutes from my house and for once, lovely short journeys to the practice matches!