Medway Up – evening match
After struggling through the evening traffic, we arrived at 5:30pm with an additional helper in Chan. It was slightly overcast, but quite muggy, just hoping the rain would keep off for the next few hours. At the draw, Ryan missed his peg 9, and drew the fancied peg 1.
The Set-up
One 3 + 2 pole line set at 9ft, with a NG .6g gimp, 0.19 rig line to a 22 drennan silverfish hook. This is to reach out just passed the patch of lilies where there is a slight eddy from the slow flow towards the town. The feeder was a 15g drennan oval groundbait feeder, to a 10″ Kamasan B911 hook. With our new fish counter, we handed the responsibility over to Chan for the evening.
The All-In
As the whistle sounded at 6:30, Ryan decided to start on the pole, and cupped in 2 small pots of groundbait/maggots to right of where he was going to fish, as this should end up of the right place with the small flow tonight. The hookbait was 2 pinkies, which is first time we had used them, and I would have had trouble hooking them with my failing eyes, but Ryan seemed to cope quite well.
The first small roach appeared after about 10 mins, and he continued to catch slowly over the next 90mins with a mix of dace, bleak, roach and the odd perch. As the bites slowed up a bit, he went on to the feeder with half a dendrobena worm held on with a single red maggot. After about 25 mins there was no sign of a bream on the feeder, so having continually fed the pole line, he went back on to the pole.
As he got back to catching small bleak, he decided to change hookbait to a single red maggot to try catching something a little larger. This did seem to work, as now he was starting to catch perch and the odd roach, but still very slowly. This carried on until the whistle sounded at 9:15 and Ryan headed off to see the weigh-in’s at the far end.
Result
Ryan’s official counter for the evening, Chan, reported he had caught 37 fish in total. Nothing big, but at least he had a few in the net, and would probably register around 2lb.
Report by Mick:
Another pleasant evening down on the Medway at Barming where nine anglers fished upstream of the bridge.
The Bream have been showing well during the week, with resident angler Albert catching Bream on a regular basis from a variety of pegs. The match curse was put on all but one peg, with Mick Wright waiting patiently on unfancied peg 10 and landing three bream in the last 15 minutes to win comfortably from Guy Usmar (peg 6) and Mick Roberts (peg 3).
Full result:
Mick Wright 8lb 6oz (12 points) £20
Guy Usmar 3lb 8oz (11) £13
Mick Roberts 2lb 2oz (10) £7
Ryan Kennison (Junior) 2lb 2oz (12)
John Overton 1lb 10oz (9)
Tom Holloway 1lb 8oz (8)
Jim Randell 1lb 6oz 8 drm (7)
Lou Buells 1lb 6oz 8 drm (7)
Dave Bertram 7oz (5)
In the overall standings, John needs just 6 points from the last match by my reckoning to secure the evening shield as I’m away next week. Hopefully a few will turn up and make him actually work for it!
Evening Shield placings after 5/6 matches (best 5 count).
Mick Roberts 11,10,9,9,10 = 49
John Overton 12,11,5,11,9 = 48
Lou Buells 0,9,10,7,7 = 33
Mick Wright 0,8,6,5,12 = 31
Guy Usmar 0,0,8,10,11 = 29
Tom Holloway 10,7,0,3,8 = 28
Terry Jarvis 0,12,12,4,0 = 28
Dave Bertram 0,0,7,12,5 = 24
Jim Randell 9,0,0,6,7 = 22
Steve Giles 0,0,11,8,0 = 19
Melvyn Pankhurst 0,0,0,0 = 0
Juniors
Ryan Kennison 12,12,0,12,12 = 48
Max Goodwin 11,0,0,0,0 =11