Mallory Park Fisheries - Snide Rumours & Dirty Lies

This week's match attendance was swelled to 48 by the return of a few of the new TEAM ABU members. In fact two of the new team members, Chris Downs and Chris Allen, had spent all weekend at the fishery, practising intensely on the Saturday, with both admitting that they had caught more in a hour than they had done for the previous six weeks put together.

John Palmer - he flies low and reels them in

Because of the shortening day we started a little earlier at 10:30am and were to fish through to 3:30pm. Kerry Dyson had kindly bought along a new toy for Rob The Eel to play with - a nice new shiny air horn to start the match. We were all hoping that he was still in attendance at 3:30pm to sound it for the end of the match! The fishery had produced well all week, with a very mild spell of weather and mild south westerly winds, however the wind though had turned a little and was a cool north westerly. The sun struggled to get out of the clouds and the fishing proved to be a little harder than the previous matches.

Pool 1 had three sections this week, the first two were very closely fought matches. Section 1 was won once again from peg 8 by John Palmer. John had a bit of luck actually, only just saving his rod being pulled in by a match winning fish - he managed to land the fish with his flies still down! Luck went the other way for regular winner Gordon Priddey - he gingerly played a strong fish for quite a while only to land a magnificent barbel of around 7lbs. Magnificent wasn't the word Gordon used for the fish though as barbel no longer count in our matches and have to be returned immediately. Third in the section was Stu Johnson, all in the section had caught on both pole and ledger tactics.

Pool 1
Section 1
Peg 8 - John Palmer - 36lbs
Peg 5 - Gordon Priddey - 35lbs
Peg 7 - Stu Johnson - 29lbs

Trev Slater

This week I had been drawn in the second section, on peg 11, it proved to be a hard match but I managed to scrape together three proper carp and 5 buddy carp. I did get to christen my new TEAM ABU Suveran 8’6” - 10’ feeder rod though and also sneak into third place. Second place went to Dom Lanni. Dom wasn't happy though, as he claimed winner Trev Slater had been 'gifted' the win. Dave Colkin, unable to catch, had gone for an early bath and Trev seized the opportunity to cast into the now empty peg. He was rewarded with three 5lb carp in as many casts. Trev commented 'the peg was solid, there had been fish jumping all day in Dave's peg and I couldn't resist a cast'.

Jeff Reast made up for last week's FTW by easily winning the final section on pool 1 with a big weight of carp caught on the pole at 14½ metres with corn hookbait over hemp. Chris Hall in second had also caught carp. Ounces behind in third was Chris Allen - he drew the peg he had practised in, and caught mainly silver fish on the pole. During the day a party balloon floated down into Chris's peg and rumour has it there was a £100 prize attached to the string. We must keep quiet about it though in case his good lady finds out.

Section 2
Peg 18 - Trev Slater - 37lbs
Peg 14 - Dom Lanni (TEAM ABU) - 36lbs
Peg 11 - Kev Russell (TEAM ABU) - 19lbs

Section 3
Peg 21 - Jeff Reast - 62lbs
Peg 24 - Chris Hall - 39lbs
Peg 23 - Chris Allen (TEAM ABU) - 38lbs

Chris Hall

Pool 4 was a TEAM ABU rout. Team members Gordon Parker and Matt Hall had an epic battle in the middle of the pool, both catching on both pole and ledger tactics but it was Gordon who just came out on top. Roy managed to keep a few fish coming throughout the day to finish in third place.

Bill Pryce took top spot in pool 5 from the wide end peg 85. Andy Kind came in a close second, from the other narrow end peg 76, but complained that the winner's peg had been rested the previous week. I have checked the records and this is not true as Rob Clayton had sat on 85 the week before!

Down on pool 6 the little girl's peg threw up the day's top weight for young Dan Hull - a tremendous 81lbs. Serpentine swimmer Stu O'Donnell managed to stay dry this week and even kept his pole in one piece to claim second from the next peg. There was a great comeback from TEAM ABU star Chris ACE Downs who had a great catch of small fish to pole tactics at the difficult far end of the pool. He claimed after the match that he could have easily caught enough carp to win the match but needed the challenge of getting into the frame doing some clever fishing.

Dave Dagga Ward battered some real crack anglers down on pool 7 and noted that at least four of the other anglers in the section could have put their weight together and he would still have battered them.

Pool 4
Peg 71 - Gordon Parker (TEAM ABU) - 69lbs
Peg 70 - Matt Hall (TEAM ABU) - 65lbs
Peg 68 - Roy Marlow (TEAM ABU) - 39lbs

Pool 5
Peg 85 - Bill Pryce - 56lbs
Peg 76 - Andy Kind - 46lbs
Peg 79 - Dave Hunter - 35lbs

Pool 6
Peg 86 - Dan Hull - 81lbs
Peg 87 - Stu O'Donnell - 46lbs
Peg 96 - Chris ACE Downs (TEAM ABU) - 43lbs

Pool 7
Peg 103 - David Ward - 36lbs
Peg 106 - Jarrad Smith - 19lbs
Peg 108 - Gary Miller - 32lbs

Jeff Reast

And finally your committee has decided to issue a warning to all of our match members. The banner headline reads 'Don’t waste your time trying to compete in our fishing events'. One of our committee members received a phone call from one of our members whose name cannot be mentioned. This member, who has a name that sounds like Steve Conway, asked if he knew of any fishing tackle company that produced a mega holdall. After some questioning regarding how mega, we received the following information - 'Every match I fish I like to have all situations covered so I take a lot of equipment. Two poles and two whips plus a margin pole, 27 top two kits 8 top three kits all elasticated four short fours, two long fours and five spare five joints plus two cupping kits, one for each pole. One 13’ float rod, one 14/15’ super long range float rod, one 12' feeder rod, two 10’ feeder rods, two pellet waggler rods and two wands. Three landing net poles and an assortment of bank sticks. I have two umbrellas but normally only take on in the summer. Naturally if I know I am going on a canal I use a different set of poles and I have my river rods and poles.' You can now see that you do not stand any chance of beating the unnamed angler.

We do not print anything unless it can be verified so we contacted two of his mates who also cannot be named. MINKY Downs and Pot Frog Allen they said that they thought this was not the complete list of tackle. The committee decided that the best recommendation to carry all of this tackle would be a long wheelbase Ford Transit. If at any time you sit next to an unnamed angler, with a name that sounds like Steve Conway, and batter him we can only assume that this was because he spent the entire match tackling up.

Russelli.

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