Emerald Silvers League Rd 5.

Back to emerald pool today for the 5th round of the silvers league but after a hard overnight frost followed by a bright sunny morning wasn't going to make things easy for sure so the breakfast at the normal hilltops with Darren (Big Bird) Greenwood was very welcome although he managed to put another belly buster away before I was halfway thought the standard!"

With the league down to 8 of us now I still left the 9 pegs we started with in the bag and left Kev Jeffries decide my fate by drawing for me ending up on peg 6 again!

I was hoping to be a bit further up the lake where its a lot deeper than the 3ft I had but I had done well before so was confident of a few fish despite the frost, I set up 2 4x12 wire wonder floats on 0.11-0.09 and a 18 63-13 hook were I planed to start the day at about 10mts, A 0.3g PB2 on the same line/hook where I plumed-up at 13mts but didn't plan to feed anything here to start with, An finally a 4x10 chanti on 0.10-0.08 and a 20 PR434 hook on a long line to fish off to my right over loose fed casters. Company wise I had Darren on peg 5 (So could have good banter") and Ken Rayner down on peg 8 in the conifers but I couldn't see him. At the all-in I fed a few casters off to my right near the over hanging conifer and started at 10mts in the open water feeding just a small dry nugget of ground-bait via a cad-pot attached to the pole and started with a single red maggot on the hook. I missed a bite after 15mins followed by another 4 in the next hour then I connected to my first fish' A 5lb carp! Great...

Looking around I had seen Ken net some tench and Darren & Barry Fitchew had caught above me in the deeper water and I was beginning to get a little worried" I had tried the shorter caster line without a sniff and after 90mins I was out at 13mts searching for something? After 2 hours I had my first fish at 13mts, Another carp! and things were really not looking good as I was still to catch any silvers' I kept at it by feeding a couple of dead maggots & small nuggets of ground-bait and on the 10 & 13mt swims and switching between them.

After 2 and a half hours I finally caught a hybrid of 10oz on the 13mt swim on a single maggot followed by another smaller fish straight after" At least now I had something to work at as those who seemed to have had early fish were now struggling so with not much being caught I could make some in-roads. I was very cautious of how much I fed and didn't feed anything until I couldn't get a bite and slowly I began to add the odd Hybrid/Skimmers, I kept feeding the swims in turn and did manage to catch a couple of fish from the shorter swim but it took longer for any indications so most of the last 90mins were spent on the longer 13mt swim catching fish on and off until the all out, Darren's swim had slowed right up and I felt that I had enough to overtake him, Although Ken's swim had slowed later in the day I new he had a good first few hours so that would of helped, I did have a bit of a disaster at one point as my landing net handle came apart and started to sink as I went to net a hybrid over a 1lb, I asked Darren to help me scoop it back whilst I tried to scoop the fish by hand' Nope" it came off but after we managed to retrieve my net Darren returned to find his rig snagged to the bottom and as he tugged at it swearing at me' it flew out straight out and tangled in the over head tree.." I didn't laugh much!  Starting the weigh-in on fairy island Andy Gard on peg 1 had 6lb odd before Barry was top on are bank with 8lb odd, I new it would be close but didn't pay much attention to what I was putting in the net but was pleased to end up with 10lb before Ken finished up with 14lb odd of mainly tench to take top spot on a very hard day. It was a surprise to finish in 2nd spot on the day but I got the result after working at it and not panicking and dumping bait in" also worth £40 back as well as 2pts on the day which now looks as though I cant get caught for the overall league although the overall pay-outs for 2nd & 3rd are now very close with 3 anglers tied on 15pts after dropping there worst results so weight count back could come into play in the final round in two weeks time. One nice thing about this time of the year is the amount of tame Robins that are around to grab any free offerings of bait' as this little fella was doing on my landing net handle".

 

 Winner ken Rayner.

 

Full results -

1st Ken Rayner (Southwest Match Group) peg 8, 14lb 4oz.

2nd Dom Sullivan (Maver/Cadbury Angling) peg 6, 10lb.

3rd Barry Fitchew (Pole Repairs) peg 4, 8lb 7oz.

4th Kev Jeffries (PSV) peg 3, 6lb 9oz.

Overall standings after 5 matches (Worst Result Dropped).

1st Dom Sullivan 6pts.

2nd Kev Jeffries 15pts, 109lb 7oz.

3rd Tim Lewis 15pts, 106lb 15oz.

4th Ken Rayner 15pts, 94lb 3oz.

5th Barry Fitchew 17pts

6th Andy Gard 19.5pts

7th Darren Greenwood 20.5pts

8th John Barker 22pts.