After 10 hard-fought rounds, Drennan Bordon’s Russ Grimes finished the Tunnel Barn Farm Winter League in style with a tidy 90lb match win. Here’s his account of a winning finale:
It’s been very up and down for me this year at Tunnel Barn for the 20 teams of four winter league. The fishing has been challenging with fish seeming to be shoaled up a lot tighter than last year and unpredictable. It was therefore nice to find myself on the right end of Club Lake for the last round, as this area has consistently been the place to be for a chance of framing. By the end I had a great day’s fishing, ending up putting 90lb on the scales for a match win – which I really needed for a bit of a confidence booster!
In prep for the start of the match I set up rigs to cover some ‘dobbing’ over to the central island and pellet fishing later on. I found a nice depth at 13m to my left and right at around 3ft where I would fish pellets later on. Then, at seven sections left and right, I found some slightly deeper water. One side I would loose feed maggots and the other I would leave unfed until much later.
Starting off with a dobbing rig and bread on the hook it was a bit slow but I found a few fish by dropping my hook bait in different areas up and down the far bank without feeding a thing. This lasted around an hour.
All the while I had been priming my 13m pellet line to the left, dropping a few micros in every couple of minutes. It was time to have a look on this. I hadn’t fed anywhere else in my peg by this point, so decided it was also time to start dropping some maggots in on my 7m line as well.
Over on the long pellet line, after a bit of rig alteration to combat the wind and present my hook bait better I had a really good run for an hour or so catching some beautiful F1s. As this started to fade I moved away from them starting odd new lines and nicking fish here and there and with an odd look dobbing.
It was slow but I was putting fish in net. With an hour to go a quick look on my maggot line gave me no reward. Paul Bick to my left, Neil Careless to my right and Joe Carass on the opposite side were all catching well and I felt it was very tight.
So, it was back to the strong pellet swim on my left, which had been left for over an hour but topped up every now and then. Going back on this it was good again and a late run on this just sealed it for me, with Paul weighing 86lb, Joe recording 77lb and Neil to my right 70lb.
Once again I have learnt lots and made more new friends I don’t think I’ve ever fished a league that’s so competitive but at the same time so friendly on the whole. I’m sure my team mate Mark Eves would agree as I think they’ve adopted him up there. He is in his element and loves every minute of it!
Congrats go out to Team Guru who fished an awesome league to come out on top. Great performances all through from Pemb Wrighting, Steve Ringer, Paul Holland and Myles Levy as always.
And not forgetting big Stu Pulsar for winning the individual aggregate yet again. Super consistent and a gent to boot.