back from africa and the last round at landsend

well judith and me had a really nice holiday with the highlighty without a doubt has to be the cage diving with great whites, what a totally awesome fish. as excpected we were very well looked after by firstly bob and carol long in hermanus for 3 days then we met tony and barb harding for the rest of the time and as you would expect from these 2 we were also looked after just nice. we hired a car for the three weeks so we had a bit of freedom to see the country and it was nice for tony and barb not to have to ferry us about as it must get a bit of a drag for them to see and do things they have done befor, but knowing them they probably wouldnt have minded to much, the sea fishing wasnt as good as it had been but the sea temps were beginning to drop so all i managed were a few sand sharks which is the south africans version of a dogfish(nuff said), i did say to tony that i would like to have a pull on a big fish before i went home so we went to meadowbank on thursday where there is always a chance of a lump so with this in mind tony fished a whole chokka(squid)of about a kilo on a slide rig which is a way of getting a big bait out cos you cant cast a big bait, it entails a type of one way clip which lets you slide a big bait down the line till it reasches the lead which you have already cast out about 100 mtrs. about 1 hour later tony gerts a bite which soons starts to feel like a big black stingray, but we never found out for sure as even with tony his fishing buddy brandon and me having a pull the fish never stopped swimming it just went straight out, its hard to explain the power of what was on the end , but you couldnt even lift the rod to put a bend in it as the clutch was so tight, but the fish just went straight for 45 mins by which time there was 300 mtrs of mono gone and nearly the same in braid backing and it still wasnt stopping, i wanted a pull on a big fish but this was just stupid, tony played a big ray on the same mark last year, but after playing it for 6 hours he had to pull for a break as he was going out for a meal but that fish only went about 200 mtrs max so this ray was probably 300 kilo,s plus, so with over half a kilometre of line out which was so tight you coulg play a tune on it tony decided to clamp down a bit more and the beast still never stopped but the 50lb braid snapped at the reel, oops i was glad he was holding the rod. when he had got over the shock of losing 60 quids worth of line he re spooled and caught a 60lb duck billed stingray a bit later in the day, when i,ve sorted the pics and vids out i will put some on here.
back to landsend and it was my turn to be on johns water so i let niel mercer draw for me and he gave me 42 which is the best peg on the lake ,even dave(beany)westcott won the lake off it in the last round, and with a section win needed to win the lge i was more than happy, to cut a long story short i could only manage third in section which wasnt going to be good enough, mat(the shrimp)tomes put in good performance on peg 51 to win the lake with 110.12 on meat fished mainly each side in the margins, and adrian clark on peg41(another corner)had 90.3 on 6mm banded pellet so that was me done for as far as the lge goes, apart from 1 carp down the edge on daster all my fish fell to 6 or 8mm banded pellet over 4,s fed with a catty at the bottom of the island shelf the top weight on the day went to bob gullick on peg 21 with 158.4 of carp on pellet fished over
2nd mat tomes 110.12 on peg 51
3rd niel mercer 106.15 peg 19
4th adrian clark 90.3 peg 41
5th nick duckett 86.7 peg 34
6th t rixon 62.15 peg 42
silvers
tom thick 28.4 peg 1
final lge
mark poppleton 7.5 pts £350
nick duckett 8.5 pts £250
tony rixon 9pts £150
nick collier 10pts £100
silvers
bob gullick 5pts £200
martin pettifer 8 pts £100