Match Report

This match was fished on one of those classic Mr Crabtree days with mist rising off of the river and a dew on the fields leading up to the river. Also when I came over Bury Hill the Arun valley was filled with mist, in fact someone was stopped on the hill taking a photograph of it. Eight anglers, which is the capacity for matches at Watersfield, had an early start for the match which was fished with one hour of the up tide, high water slack and the rest of the match on the down tide.

Catches again were composed mainly of roach, dace, perch and rudd although one small bream was caught. Unusually none of the large roach caught by the specimen anglers fishing for barbel were seen. Interestingly the top three swims were those that were placed in the first match.In first place again continuing his successful run was Mike Kitchener with 8 – 12 – 8 of mainly roach and dace. These were caught either on the whip or long trotting a stick float. Mike was fishing on the most upstream swim close to the border fence.

Steve Simmonds was in second place and was fishing the swim one up from the mint swim and weighed in 7 – 0 – 4 of roach and dace. This week Steve trotted a stick float to catch his fish.

Fishing the mint swim was Keith Hughes who weighed in 6 – 12 – 12 of roach and dace. Keith was on the Golden Peg which has not been won yet this season.

After two legs of the Kirkby Bott Trophy Steve is in first place with 19 points followed by Keith with 17 points with two more legs to be fished.

After 14 matches Kitch is leading in the Clubman (140 points), Matchman (900 points) and Weight (197-1-8) competitions from Keith with 124 points, 562 points and 117-6-12 respectively.

The matchmen have been playing a very active part in the work that is being carried out at the Hurston Lane Fishery complex. This match finished just after midday and the majority of the anglers went to Hurston where they started to prepare a base for a new shed, continued to cut down trees ( to open up the fishery) and then started bonfires to burn all the resultant timber. The matchmen had a free sunday two weeks later and again, together with other club volunteers erected the shed, cut down even more trees and had two massive bonfires.to burn all the wood.