Team Guru Secure Second - Andy Pell

The final round of the third winter league, held at Meadowlands, took place on 16th March. The Guru team consisted of Adam Rooney, Mark Griffiths and I. We were currently lying in second place and being a fair few points behind the leaders, were looking to consolidate this position.

Thankfully, the draw was kind to us and put me on an end peg, which is known as a flyer, so confidence was high. Adam and Mark sadly drew average pegs, but I was sure they would both produce the goods.

When I arrived at my swim, I was a bit concerned, as the wind had changed and was now blowing off my back. My concerns proved to be well founded and going into the last hour of the match, I would have been lucky to have 10lb in my nets.

I had been feeding some dampened-down 4mm pellets, at 6m and I needed this line to come alive during the later part of the match. Luckily it did, and by fishing a 4xno14 rig consisting of 0.17mm N-Gauge main line to 0.15mm hook-length and a size-14 LWG hook I managed seven carp on a 6mm expander in the last hour. This gave me 66lb and decent section points. As it happens my match turned out to be a damage-limitation exercise and I was relieved to have not totally blown out.

On the team front though, Mark Griffiths had enjoyed a good day and had won his section with 50lb plus, but Adam had struggled from what had been a really hard section all winter. On the plus side, we had managed to secure second place overall and we were really pleased with that. We had been in the top three all through the competition and to secure second place for the second year running, in what is a very strong field of anglers, was a good achievement.

Roll on next year when we’ll be trying to go one better!