Match Report

The club fished the Fittleworth stretch of the Rother last Sunday and the first thing to report is that although the matchmen kept an eye out for them no wild boar were spotted!

With only 6 anglers fishing we decided to keep the match fairly tight and use the top straight. A week or so ago Ray H had reckoned that we should go further down and had even offered to help peg the lower section – however come the morning of the match no Ray at pegging time so the top section was used.

Keith Hughes drew the favoured bridge swim and using a combination of a small waggler down the far side and a stick float down the inside Keith managed to keep fish coming for most of the match, nothing of real note apart from one perch of around 1⁄2lb. It was also noted that Keith managed to weigh in pretty much all the fish he connected with – have his fortunes changed? Anyway with a mixed bag of perch, dace, gudgeon, minnows and a ‘chublet’ gives total weight of 3 – 1 – 0 was enough for first place.

In second place and perhaps proving that his win of his first outing with the club was no fluke was Rick Hanson. Rick drew the pump house swim and had an all dace net of 1 – 10 – 0.

In third place was Ray Huskisson who like Keith had a range of species but only managed to find 13 oz.

A couple of significant points to bear in mind for the future;
The perch seem to be showing in ever increasing numbers and size on the Rother. Over the last few years we have rarely seen anything other than the very odd small perch come out. But this season we have seen a lot more and some of quite a respectable size.
We would normally have expected the deeper pegs such as ‘the Throat’ to have produced but the very experienced angler who drew this peg reckoned that he really struggled throughout the whole match for a few ounces whilst those drawn in the shallower pegs all found significantly more fish.