Philtone teams of 7 , hillview canals 1/2/3

This has turned into a bit of an annual event, where philtone boss(now) niel mercer gets 21 of hus friends together to have a bit of a xmas laugh with a teams of 7 format, the teams.are.drawn behind closed doors beforehand , but looking at the teams there definitely was no foul play LOL 😂😂😂😂, listed below.

I got to the venue in plenty of time for breakfast, all a bit alfresco as we had to eat it under a pagoda in the fresh air, so a speedy demolition was called for, as there was snow on the ground and the lakes were frozen, luckily i had delved.into the depths of the shed and dragged this bad boy out for the first time this winter.

Draw done and i ended up on canal 2, peg 62 which is the aerator peg, so a nice draw, first job was to clear the ice, it was only about 3mm thick so nice and easy, plus ypu can go around and clear the floaters away.

Company wise i had paul(beaver)elmes.to my right and mr happy Anton page to my left, only two rigs seemed to be the order of the day , a maggot rig for a couple of spots and a rig for dogging bread along the far bank, At the start i fed some maggots by the water windmill, and some down to my right at top 4 at the bottom of the shelf as it was the same depth in both spots. Straight across dogging and caught from the off but only small fish, and i mean small 3 to 8oz, not the size i needed, but i wasnt complaining as most hadnt caught yet, i would like to say i had some better fish ,but apart from two fish over 2 lb i seemed to be in the nursery today, paul to my right started to catch, but he was gettimg mainly proper carp.with only a.smattering of juveniles, he was fishing by the ice up towards me and well off the bank, if i went to far to my right there was a nasty underwater snag which i lost several hooks in, paul was flying at ime stage and was well ahead, anton and me.were suffering small fish, i did manage to stop paul catching to be fair, it was a dirty trick but alls fair in love and war , he decided to fish off to his right for a bit, as his back was turned i gave the ice pack between us a bit of a nudge, it duly obliged and slid into his peg covering his catching spot, it was only paul who didnt find it amusing, well he sort of did, but he just pushed it on and it became the problem of phil mercer and martin rayet, who by now was catching well on maggot down the .middle, up to my left on the end peg tim ford(my team) was having a really good day and caught steadily for the duration of the match, i just stayed with the small carp, and it nearly paid off, i ended up with 38lb to pauls 40, the lake and match was won by tim with 109, followed by martin with 74 then dave lewis was third with 58lb, all in my team, to be honest most people had some fish , odd areas struggled.with canal 3 being the most difficult, weigh sheets below.

Big thanks to niel and philtone for hosting the event, greatly appreciated by all there, and i think beaver may have forgiven me by now, Just another quickie, went to huntstrete for a bit of a go, i enjoy fishing through the ice, got to bridge to find the far end ice free, but full of anglers, couldnt believe how many were there.so i set up on peg 15, tbe ice was only thin so only the baby breaker was needed, soon had a 13 mtr channel cleared out.

Fed a ball of groundbait at 6 mtrs and another at 13 mtrs both with a few casters and pinkies inand to be fair ive had a bite most put ins, mainly small 3oz skimmers, there are a couple of 12 oz fish in the net, one of whuch dave burnham caught when he had a go, it must have been easy. I probably ended up with 6/7lb which is nice fishing in an ice hole.

paul barnfield managed a couple of the bigger skimmers up on peg 4, and the angler on peg 8 also caught a lot of small fish aswell, and a couple of carp anglers over on 32 and 33 had a couple of carp, only small , an 8lb and a 3lb fish, but probably most welcome, with the rivers still out of action get yourselves a bathampton licence and day tickets from premier angling down by the marina and have a go, lots of skimmers on bridge and withy has been giving some roach catches, the carp fishing on all lakes is hard at the mo, but it is winter, but you got to be in it to win it as they say, and with all this covid business going on the safest place to self isolate is definitely on the bank in the fresh air, not sat at home watching the same old repeats or another lame reality show, so get wrapped up , pop down to premier , pick up some bait and bits and up to date info on where to go, whichever discipline floats your boat.