Rolfs Winter league 2 - Match 1

My first match this year is the 2nd winter league at Rolfs in Oxfordshire. Same as the 1st league its run over 6 matches and contested by teams of 3 with 1 member of each team fishing in each section twice on a rotation each match only difference this league is that Rolf has mixed the sections up a bit to make each section fairer

A Section stays the same pegs 34-7 on little lake

B Section is now pegs 9-13 on motorway bank and pegs 28-32 on car park bank

C Section is now pegs 14-18 on motorway bank and pegs 23-25 on car park bank

For this league I am fishing for Team JCS and my team mates are Paul Jay and Steve Wilson

As none of us wanted to fish on A section we drew straws and I lost and ended up with A section Paul drew B section and Steve got C Section

But once I've fished it its over and done with for 2 matches and hopefully by then it will have warmed up a bit and the water will be back to sensible levels

So when A Section were called to draw I stepped forward and pulled peg 36 from the bag things were not looking good as general opinion was the only 2 pegs you didn't want to draw were 36 or 37

Paul drew peg 9 another bad draw and Steve pulled peg 17 an excellent draw

so our chances weren't looking too good with 2 bad draws but that's match fishing

Plan of attack today is simple I intend to fish bread flake on a crumb feeder out in the middle and set up a pellet line at 13m and maggot line at 6m

As you can see from the pictures the water level is still up about 4 foot and covering the platforms

Today the weather forecast is for severe gales and rain later on so I don't hold out much hope for fishing the pole lines and suspect I may be going home wet tonight
For company on peg 37 I had Ian from Thame Tackle the only man to draw a worse peg than me today

On the all in I filled my feeder with damped down white crumb put a piece of bread on the hook and cast out to the middle of the little lake looking around the lake it looked as though feeder was the main choice of everyone today probably due to the building wind and for the 1st hour that's all we did re-cast and look around as no one was having any joy peg 34 which was tipped as a flyer was looking dead on both feeder line and pole lines

In the 2nd hour peg 7 the other flyer in A Section started to catch carp quite regularly but the rest of us just sat and watched

In the next 2 hrs I switched between the feeder and the pole at 13m with pellet but had no joy on either

During this time Ernie on peg 4 landed a decent skimmer and a couple of small Roach peg 34 had taken a couple of small Roach as had peg 40 and peg 7 had continued to catch decent Carp so I needed to get something to grab some section points for the team so I spent the last hour fishing maggot at 6m and eventually with 10 mins to go I landed a small Perch then thankfully Rolf blew the whistle and made us all stop

I packed my gear away and headed off to help with the weigh in in A section peg 34 weighed 00.08 on 36 my Perch weighed 00.01 peg 37 blanked 40 had 01.06 peg 2 weighed 00.04 then Ernie on peg 4 had 02.08 and in a close fought contest peg 7 had 49.00

Best weights on B section were a 41lb and a 36lb from pegs 29 and 31 and in C section best weight and match winner was Lloyd moss with 99.12 from peg 23 with a couple of 30lb backing weights from pegs 18 and 24

My 1oz got me 6th in section and 2 points Paul managed 9lb 12oz from peg 9 for last in section and 1 point Steve had 17lb 8oz from peg 17 for 5th in section and 3 points giving Team JCS 6 points

Winter League 2007

Team-----------------------Total

Rolfs Team Diamond------20

SPRO-----------------------16

Rolfs Team Gold-----------13

GOT Red Lion--------------11

Thame Tackle--------------09

No Hopes------------------08

JCS------------------------06

Well its not a great start to the league but as usual the company was great and next match I'm on B section so lets hope Team JCS get some better draws