12.01.15

Weekend success in tough conditions - Andy Bennett

Saturday was the scene of the sixth round of the teams of four Partridge Lakes winter league. My Guru team was in first position after five rounds with an 11-point lead but with three rounds to go anything could happen, so we needed to be on the ball to keep our position.

The day didn't start well with the team drawing poor pegs, so damage limitation was the order of the day. Personally, I drew our best peg on paper - peg 42 on Lake 2.

I had a slow start but slowly the peg began to get stronger and I finished with 33 fish for 53lb to finish 3rd on my lake, only beaten by the two pegs on the spit who had 79lb and 75lb for 1st and 2nd overall, so I was happy with that as I would never have been able to catch enough to win the match. Maggots across and down the track late on did the damage.

Elsewhere we had two 6th places and a 3rd to finish with 18 points on the day, which was enough for 3rd in the team event but more importantly we not only kept the lead we actually extended it by three points somehow, which wasn't expected, so a good result all round.

Fellow Guru angler Steve Parry pulled out all the stops to finish sixth from one of the worst pegs on the lake with 35lb, mainly caught on the bomb using the smallest Guru square leads and double maggot. It might not sound a great result but when 33lb was 10th in the section, his result could prove important come the end of the league.

Sunday seen me on the individual league again at Partridge Lakes. With 85 anglers booked in, it’s going be a fantastic league and I drew unfancied peg 30 on Piper. This lake has a bar running down the middle of it and my peg is the only one not able to reach the top of it, so I wasn't expecting much but I was hoping to catch enough silvers to make up for the lack of F1s.

As it happened, the cold wind meant the fish were hiding in the corner where I was, which very rarely happens but then again we don't experience 50-60 mph gusts very often either, and on the day I managed 26 F1s plus around 15lb of silvers to finish with 64lb and win the match individually - a great start to the league.

All my F1s were caught on pellets with a 4x14 wire-stemmed float tied to 0.15mm N-Gauge to 0.11mm bottom and a size 20 LWG hook with the silvers caught on maggots at six metres.

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