LINGMERE, 23/11/14 ~ Practice makes perfect for The Wriggler

The Lingmere wind machine had been turned down low for this latest visit, making it a relatively pleasant experience for everyone. Well, everyone with a modicum of sense but not those who forgot to take a decent coat. With 18 in attendance, it was decided to put a section on the bottom lake to ease the pressure on the top lake and give everyone a better day's sport.
Those drawn on the bottom certainly had good sport and enjoyed plenty of bites throughout the match. A head to head developed on adjacent pegs, and provided us with the first and third overall.
Following 5 or 6 appearances in the Wednesday 'dodger' matches, Dirk Wriggler put the knowledge gained in those 'practice' sessions to good use. Unconfirmed reports suggest a method feeder with maggot was the successful tactic, and Degsy ended up with an impressive total of 55lb 02oz.
That proved much too good for the gallant effort of Ian Simpson, who also employed maggot baits, but mainly on the pole, and Simo brought 42lb to the scales for a well earned third place.
Up on the top lake, things were a whole lot tougher, with hard work required to  make a few bites.
The Awesome One known as Jamie Pickup found the task easier than most, and he too caught steadily all day. Feeding an amazing 4 pints of maggots, JBay had a mixed bag but bemoaned the fact that his fish were small. They ended up totalling 50lb 06oz. Super stuff from the Match Sec.
Next best was venue regular The Gnome. Despite telling everyone that pellet had not been working, it did on the day and Yozz won his section with 34lb 08oz.
Col Cook had the help of a decent carp weighing 7 or 8lb, which enhanced a nice bag of fish and gave him a 30lb 09oz total for his section win.
Gary Brislen kept up his recent run of good form and duly won a tough section with 19lb 12oz... nobody else weighed in the section.
The last section was won easily by the male model that is Paul Robb. His open-topped balaclava ensured his hair wasn't ruffled but his ears were kept warm, and fishing comfortably, he registered a solid 28lb 02oz for section victory.
Pato had an eventful day...... before the match started, a feeder cast to get the range saw him playing a barbel that had taken a liking to his hook with pellet band. It turned out to be the only fish in his swim for the first two hours. The next one to arrive was hooked, took him into the rushes, and when he finally retrieved his hook, it was attached to a ball of 20lb line with a pole rig, and 3 assorted feeders. Later in the match, he finally started getting bites on the pole. Such was his keenness to connect with these bites he was striking with such verve that the pole tip was 15 feet in the air every time he missed a bite. As one comedian remarked, he poked the man in the moon's eye out three times! (Dennis..you funny guy). He also received some coaching from Sumo, who had gone walkabout after struggling to catch. Conversation went something like........ Neil, let me tell you all the things I've made a balls of so you don't make the same mistakes. Seems there's a full moon every week in Sumo's world.
Well done to Dirk, and Jamie for their respective performances, and well done to the section winners.