After a hard frost over Friday night, 11 anglers turned out on a windy and cold, showery 7th December day. Brian "golden arm" Tinman drew the fancied road side of the pool at Melverley Farm, with the wind on his back, which made casting of the preferred feeder waggler very easy. Ken Arnold and Clive Biddulph also drew this bank. The rest of us had to put up with blustery showers and strong winds, copled with bright sunlight reflecting from the water's surface. However, Brain ran out winner yet again with another good weight of 49 Lbd 1 Oz of mainly chub, with a couple of "lump" carp. Second from the next peg was Clive Biddulph with 36 Lbs 8 Ozs, with one really good carp and some smaller ones, but some chub too. Third from the left bank was Nick Bastock, who towards the end of the match sussed out a maggot feeder worked fished tight to the island and put 33 Lbs on the scales consisting of mainly chub. This now means Ken is still in the lead at the half way point, with just 7 penalty points, but Brian is closing in on him with 9 now. Clive moves into the third with just one more on 10. For the full result, click on the link below.

If you want to fish the next match of this 6 match series on 11th January 2015, it has been switched to Melverley Farm, but this time on the larger Beeches Pool. This is because Bayliss Carp Pool has been rendered virtually un-fishable by lowering it's level by 4 feet!

Winter League Result - 3 Sheet1.pdf (24.32 kb)

I heard this story from Jan over the phone and just had to get him to email the details to me. Read on, as this is truly remarkable! Jan says:

I had a remarkable experience with a sizeable Salmon which I hooked on the bend above the' stones' which decided that it wanted to return to the Atlantic and took me through the fast water through the "V" and beyond. It then incredibly beached itself on the gravel bed on the opposite bank!  It was impossible to pull the fish off the gravel and having waited in vain for quite a while in the hope that a canoeist might take me over to the other side, I decided that the only option I had was to cut my line and drive over to Sheinton via Cressage bridge and face the long walk downstream in the hot June sun. To my astonishment  the Salmon was still lying on the gravel in barely an inch of water and I was shocked to discover that it was amazingly still alive, but only just, as at least an hour had passed since it was hooked, with my lure embedded in its tail.  Happily, I was able to revive the fish after supporting it in shallow water for what seemed hours but it was probably 20 minutes. I estimate this fish to have weighed between 15 and 18lb (see attached photo) My landing net is not less than 24in in diameter and is 26in at its widest point. This provides a good estimation of size. Of, course, I cannot claim this Salmon as a fairly caught fish and have not reported it as such on my EA annual Salmon return, though I do wonder whether the fish was originally hooked in the mouth as I wasn't really winding in at the time, but letting the lure flutter about. Could the lure somehow have transferred from its mouth to its tail when the Salmon hit the surface and rolled about violently when it first made contact? We will never know.

Jan's salmon - 2014.jpg (1.11 mb)