Thursday February 1st 2024.

Last Sunday saw the penultimate round of the 2023/24 Winter League take place on the permanently pegged match length of the River Wye at Belmont and Tennis Courts. The river had had a couple of recent flushes due to the storms and was dropping nicely to read 1.30m on the gauge at Old Wye Bridge as the match started. Many anglers were dreading drawing “A” section hoping for a peg on the Asda bank below the old railway footbridge. Chub were expected to figure strongly in a lot of the weights with a chance of a barbel or two for those pegged on the Tennis Courts section.

Individual winner on the day was Anthony Taylor (Alan’s tackle) who finished with a great catch of chublets to weigh in 111lb 8oz from peg 84. This was his second consecutive WL win having recorded 97lb 6oz on adjacent peg 83 in the previous round. Runner up was Ian Hingley (Woody’s Bait tech) with 79lb 2oz from peg 54 on the left bank of the river. Third was Shane Harvey (Alan’s tackle) with a weight of 68lb 8oz from peg 60. Fourth was Ray Downey (Alan’s tackle) pegged on peg 96 who weighed in 67lb 4oz.

With Alan’s tackle taking three of the top 4 individual places, this enabled them to take the team win on the day with 54points. Woody’s Bait Tech  finished runners up with 52 points followed by Wizards on 49points with league leaders Woody’s coming joint  fourth with Cadence Superteam on 45points.

With one round still to fish on 25th February, Woody’s extended their lead at the top of the table to 11 points from second placed Cotswolds on 44 points with Nomads A third on 40 points. Full results below :