Tuesday 19th December 2023

Sunday saw the latest round of the ABC sponsored Winter League take place on the match stretch at Belmont. With the previous rounds being plagued with high river levels it was nice to see a river that looked spot on, having been dropping slowly throughout the week to reach around 1.2m by the time the all in was sounded. Pre match talk was that the river would fish its socks off and expectations were high  that there would be some bumper weights caught.

And so it proved with 4 weights topping 100lb and 13 weights topping 50lb. Individual winner on the day was Welsh international Andrew “Spud” Murphy who was on permanent peg 92. He set his stall out for chub using a heavy groundbait mix and maggot hookbait and after a biteless first 15 minutes, caught a fish a chuck throughout the rest of the match to take 151lb 2oz to the scales. Runner up  from fancied peg 96 was Nigel Evans who used whip and stick float  to catch 140lb 6oz of mainly chub with some big roach. In third place was Tom Boulton who weighed in 142lb 13oz from peg 83 ahead of Bob Giles on the next peg downstream who weighed in 105lb 6oz.

On the team front Cotswold took the top spot on the day with 58points, with Woody’s Premier(53points) taking runners up spot ahead of Woody’s Bait-tech (51 points) who finished third. The league table shows Cotswold (35 points) leading the pack, a point ahead of Woody’s Premier in second place and 2 points ahead of Woody’s Bait-Tech in third place.

Once again the river showed what a fantastic place it is to fish in the Winter with an average weight of 38lb for the 72 angles who took part. The next round is on Sunday 7th January 2024.