Monday 20th January 2025.

Yesterday saw the penultimate round of this series take place on the match length at Belmont. After the scheduled 5th round was cancelled 2 weeks ago due to snow and high water, the river has seen a steady fall during that time to around 0.7 m with the temperature hovering round about 3degrees over the preceeding days. With these cold  conditions it was likely that chub would be the main species with perhaps some perch from noted pegs with the main bulk of fish likely to be between the old railway bridge and the Old Wye bridge. Those anglers drawing “A ” section were dreading the long walk and the prospect of a dry net. Would Woodys take this round and score maximum points again or would another team pip them?

As it turned out there were some good individual weights caught on the “town” stretch but those upstream of the railway bridge struggled with many in sections A and B failing to catch anything but a cold. Individual winner on the day was Paul Johnson (Wizards), who drew plum peg 96 between the two road bridge. He celebrated his recent 64th birthday a few days earlier by catching chub to record a winning weight of 118lb 14oz and collect 12 points for his team. Runner up was Kevin Dicks(Nomads A) who was three pegs upstream of the winner. He managed  106lb 6oz. Third individually was Ant Taylor(Alan’s Tackle) who weighed in 97lb 4oz from left bank peg 61.

On the team front, Wizards topped the round with 54points despite having one angler who failed to catch with Woodys coming in second with 47points, again with one angler recording a dry net. Joint third were Nomads A and Alan’s Tackle who both recorded 44 points.

With Woodys not managing to record another straight win but still collecting 11 points, their lead at the top of the table has become unasailable and they will finish champions with 59 points with one round to go. However the fight is on to see who will finish runners up as any one of 5 teams are still in with a chance. It is all to fish for in the final round which is scheduled for Sunday 23rd February. Full results below:

Before that the rescheduled Alan Reynolds Memorial match takes place this coming Sunday (26th) followed by the River Wye Feeder Championship (Feb 9th) and the 2-Day Spring Festival on the 12th and 13th February. Lets hope for a bit warmer weather for these matches.