Packington Somers Fishery. Molands Mere. June 14th, 2008

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Individual Championship 2008.

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Well an early start saw me have a trouble free 120 mile run up the M40 and beyond to Packington Somers Fishery arriving around 8am in plenty of time to dip my nets and grab a cuppa and a sausage sarnie, Soon the car park started to fill but a phone call from Keith to let me know that his car had expired on the M6 put a bit of a downer on things.
Linda, Bucko’s wife was soon into full raffle ticket selling mode parting us from our pennies, and I have to admit to a bit of a shock when I looked round to see Mark Downes (The England Manager) and Ken Giles unloading their kit!!!! but they were there for another match.

9am and Vince got the draw underway for the 41 of us in attendance with his usual efficiency. Into the draw bag and 48 stuck to my fingers. Into the car and round I drove to find my peg. On arrival I found that I had Nick (Monkey) and Bucko for company on the day.

I have to say that the peg looked 1st rate A solid concrete slab to fish from with a raft of lilies in the margin to my left, a large bush overhanging the right and a comfortable chuck of around 25yds to the island. The only thing was that I didn’t see a single sign of fish moving.
I just set up a couple of rigs for the pole, one for the 6ft of water that I had at 11mtrs and another for the margins that would double up as a shallow rig. I also got the feeder out of its ready bag, but did change the hooklength from the one that had been previously employed at Rolf’s.
Bait would be a selection of dendra’s, casters, corn and pellet with the groundbait being Special’G’ with a selection of hook baits added.

With a bit of time to spare I had a stroll over to the pegs behind me to have a chat with Colin and Lee Richards (missabite) from where I could also see Vince setting up on his peg which he had got me to draw for him, and I have to say that it looked like I’d done him proud.

Just before the all in Vince popped over for a quick chat and blew the whistle for the off before returning to his peg.
I flicked a pinch of caster and pellet into my 2 margin lines and cupped 3 balls of groundbait onto the 11mtr line before picking up my margin rig and dropping it in next to the lilies with 2 casters on the hook. Almost instantly the float slid away and a small Tench of around 8ozs was soon into the net. Next put in resulted in a hand sized Skimmer. 2 fish in 2 put ins, unfortunately it all went pear shaped after that. The margin line appeared to contain nothing more than 1″ long Perch that seemed to be having their own competition to see who could swallow a bait the deepest.

Moving out to the 11mtr line to get away from the suicidal little buggers succeeded, but unfortunately the line seemed utterly devoid of any fish whatsoever. I tried under the bush to my right but apart from a couple of 2oz Roach that was it, while another look to the lilies showed the Perch were still in residence.

Looking across it didn’t appear that anyone else was setting the place alight, so the feeder was put into action baited with half a Dendra. After about 30 minutes of inactivity Paul (nomorelongwalks) phoned for an update just as I had a 2″ pull and connected with a Skimmer of around 1lb, but my report to him was hardly upbeat. I was having to wait far to long between bites to do any damage. Vince phoned but hung up abruptly, phoning me back to let me know that he’d just lost a decent Carp at the net, but had followed up by netting a decent Tench and Bream.
I sat it out adding the occasional small Skimmer and losing the one decent Tench, a fish of around 4lbs that I hooked when it spat the hook about a foot from the net.

Thankfully 4pm signalled the All-out to put an end to my torture, and at this point I have to say thanks to John Burchell’s team on the scales, because I can’t remember seeing a weigh-in conducted with such speed and efficiency for a long time, not that my 5lb 9ozs of bits taxed the scalesmen too severely.

So Back to the clubhouse where £1 coins were handed over to Besty, Dave and Dirk though somehow I’d not had a £1 with Vince today, and a buffet was laid on prior to the prize giving and the raffle.

So to the winners the spoils (apologies for the picture quality, must have set the camera wrong)
1st place….. Lee Richards taking the Trophy and a new Matchbox S series seatbox system supplied by Jim Burton of Matchbox.

2nd place….. Matt Nutt and a Matchbox seatbox.

3rd place….. Mike Globe and a Matchbox seatbox.
The Section winners all received Shimano reels supplied by John at The Matchmen, Nottingham.

The raffle was very well supported raising £224 which will be split between the Kent Air Ambulance and Great Ormond Street Hospital, and almost everyone appeared to take home a prize of some sort.

In closing I’d just like to say Very Well Done to Vince and his team of helpers for his usual Superb Organisation.
A Big Thank You to Ray Best for all his efforts in sourcing the prizes that were generously donated by Jim Burton and all at Matchbox Tackle and by John at The MatchMen in Nottingham.
Thanks to Jon Burrell and his Team for the use of their fishery.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 44	Lee Richards	43lbs 14ozs
2nd	Peg 21	Matt Nutt	40lbs 07ozs
3rd	Peg 12	Mike Globe	38lbs 15ozs
4th	Peg 37	Vince Gould	29lbs 13ozs
5th	Peg 54	Eric Robathan	27lbs 11ozs
6th	Peg 29	Neil Jeacock	25lbs 12ozs
7th	Peg 26	Midge Milnes	24lbs 09ozs
8th	Peg 15	Dirk Williams	21lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 58	Steve Ford	20lbs 13ozs
10th	Peg 11	Tony Roberts	20lbs 04ozs
11th	Peg 27	Gary Thorpe	18lbs 01ozs
12th	Peg 55	Alan West	17lbs 12ozs
13th	Peg 13	Ray Best	17lbs 10ozs
14th	Peg 18	Jake King	15lbs 13ozs
15th	Peg 8	Chris Kendall	15lbs 04ozs
16th	Peg 40	David Wall	14lbs 12ozs
17th	Peg 25	Lee Swinborne	13lbs 10ozs
18th	Peg 16	Dave Webster	12lbs 12ozs
19th	Peg 43	Mark Gallagher	12lbs 04ozs
20th	Peg 23	Steve Steak	11lbs 02ozs
21st	Peg 31	Paul Scatt	10lbs 12ozs
22nd	Peg 53	Mark Causer	10lbs 07ozs
23rd	Peg 2	Andy Spruce	10lbs 02ozs
24th	Peg 4	Simon Elsey	9lbs 12ozs
25th	Peg 17	Roy Ravenhill	8lbs 01ozs
26th	Peg 45	Colin Sharrard	7lbs 09ozs
27th	Peg 33	Ant Haywood	7lbs 04ozs
28th	Peg 19	Rob Powell	7lbs 02ozs
29th	Peg 14	Mick Large	6lbs 00ozs
30th	Peg 48	Peter Morton	5lbs 09ozs
31st	Peg 57	Lee G	5lbs 06ozs
32nd	Peg 9	Roger Embury	5lbs 04ozs
33rd	Peg 50	Nick Watkins-Price	4lbs 12ozs
34th	Peg 51	John Buxton	4lbs 02ozs
35th	Peg 3	Simon Mound	4lbs 00ozs
36th=	Peg 46	Brian Gray	3lbs 08ozs
36th=	Peg 35	Steven Parker	3lbs 08ozs
38th	Peg 52	Ian Venn	2lbs 05ozs
39th	Peg 56	Clive Pritchard	2lbs 00ozs
40th	Peg 3	John Haigh	1lb  00ozs
41st	Peg 60	Steve Oswick	D.N.W.

	Section Winners
A	Tony Roberts
B	Dirk Williams
C	Neil Jeacock
D	David Wall
E	Eric Robathan