Southern Intersite, Willow Park 4th August 2007

For the 2nd year running I had volunteered to captain the Maggotdrowning.com team for the Southern Intersite match at Willow Park. We had assembled a motley crew of anglers all keen to do well, although the usual way to do things with the Maggotdrowners is to come last in section and finish last overall.

The match was held over Small, Middle and Big lakes meaning there were a number of options to tackling the fish. I had opted for Big lake as this involved a lot of feeder flinging which suited me. Drawing peg 59 I was quite pleased as the area had been throwing up some decent catches of bream in the weeks previous. For company on peg 57 I had something of a venue expert, Perry Stone, although he wasn't admitting to being very happy about his peg as he said it was just out the the area he wanted to be.

There was a light breeze blowing across the lake so feeder rods were set up for a thirty yard chuck to a gravel bar and a margin pole for any lumps that may be hiding under the bush to my right later in the match.

The all in sounded and everything went well with a bream of around 2lbs coming to the net first cast. 2nd cast and another fish was on it's way in , a little smaller this around 1lb. Then it went dead, no bites, no liners nothing. I fired out a a few balls of groundbait and fished under the bush with the margin pole for 3o minutes to let the feeder line settle. A few 4 oz perch took my maggot hookbait before I went back on the feeder. Unfortuantely it still seemed dead on this line but I decided to stick at it. After about an hour I had managed another couple of reasonable bream but not much else. Things continued like this till the end apart from the huge carp I hooked and lost under the bush with 10 minutes to go. It just didn't want to stop. At the weigh in I put 6lbs on the scales only just beaten by Perry on peg 57 with 87lbs !!!!!! No wonder I coudn't catch anything he'd got them all in front of him. (so much for a peg he didn't fancy)

Back at the clubhouse things were looking like they normally do with most team members finishing low down in their sections, a couple managing less than a pound. The results were announced and at least we'd kept up the tradition of coming last in these events.

Thanks to Dave Pearson for organising the day, can we go somewhere else next year ?