Huntstrete silver's league rnd 5

After the tasty help yourself breakfast at the Toby inn in whitchurch, it was off on the the 10 minute drive to the fishery for the penultimate round of the series, it was my turn in section D, which runs from peg 21 to 30, I fancied 24 or 26 as they would have a bit of shelter from the wind which was forecast to gust to 40 mph, but those pegs went to Steve tanner and Paul Dickson, I pulled out 30, which was the end peg in the section plus I had the bonus of an empty peg to my left,
As I walked  to my peg after a loo call I had to walk past Jimmy Norris who has been around for ages, when up began fishing matches on the river over 40 years ago he was one of the stars of the time , and a member of the all conquering bathampton squad , he was definitely one of the anglers I looked up to at the time, along with the likes of topper Haskins , Mike Jones and Melvyn Holbrook, to name just a few, back to Jimmy and he can still catch a few as he is still showing.

He certainly seems to have been around for an age , as has his seat box, he even showed me his waggler selection inside the lid in some slotted foam, I can't remember seeing a better selection of cork avons and porcupine quills anywhere, but then again I havnt looked in rich Coles,s box.

Back to my peg and the wind was going to make it difficult as I had an island at 18 mtrs and it was funnelling through at a great rate of knots, so 2 rigs today, a 1.25g drennan as7 to fish over groundbait, and a .6 g as5 for down wind and just down the margin shelf for hopefully some roach and maybe a perch. For company I was hemmed in by a couple of old boys , Mike Jones to my right and league organiser Chris rolfe to my left.

I plummed up and found I had the same depth at 6 and 11 mtrs, so at the start I fed a ball of groundbait on both lines , and fed some caster down the edge .
I expected a bite fairly quickly , but it took 20 mins to get a fish and that was a small skimmer on the 6 mtr line, I did get a couple more but it was very slow for everyone , 1 1/4 hours in and I had a 3lb bream on the short line , and I would like to say I had several more , but it never happened, with only small skimmers finding the bait and not really to many of those, bites became harder and harder to get , and the wind wasn't helping, Paul barnfield on peg 28 had the right idea and fished a small feeder for the most , and had odd skimmers on it, he did manage a couple on the waggler early doors and a few towards the end of the match on the pole , as the wind eased for the the last 45 minutes, and he ran out the winner today with just over 16lb, beating Steve Dawson into second place off peg 7 with 13lb +
I ended up with 6.12 which was third in the section, which keeps me in with a bit of a shout as far as the league goes, but Mike Nicholls must be favourite as he had a second in section today meaning he is sat on top of the pile by a couple of points , the last match is in a fortnight, but the draw can be cruel with some very bad pegs in the hat which can really upset the results.

Barney with his catch, well done matey, amazing you don't seem to moan when your catching LOL.