Wednesday was the final round of the UK Champs held at Barston. For some reason it fished really badly for most; even those lucky enough with the luxury of an empty peg to one side. Heavy rain following hot weather and a 48-hour carp match at the weekend maybe?<\/p>\n
I had to laugh when one of the organisers said my peg 117 was in a \u2018nice fair section\u2019. Possibly the daftest comment I\u2019ve heard all year! I was in with the most famous peg in the Midlands, peg 124, and flyer 123, and 122, and 121. Oh, and 120! Don\u2019t worry I thought we still might have an outside chance as we\u2019d at least have a bit more room at this traditionally poorer end of the section. That\u2019s how it\u2019s always pegged. Erm, not today! Every single peg in a row, despite less than 70 anglers on the match. Meanwhile everyone pegged opposite in the fancied teens and 20s had an empty peg. Never mind, we just all shook our heads and had a nice moaning competition amongst ourselves. It\u2019s all we could possibly win. Even the passers by shook their heads and chuckled. Even the joggers! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
With the extra tight pegging and 100lb always still the target for top three in the section, the pole was a no go, so I fished the PVA bag at extra long range and primed a heavily fed bomb and waggler swim, hoping for a big arrival. I ended up with a very limp 17lb which as expected beat the two pegs to my left (who had 2lb and 3lb) and no one to my right where as predicted the weights got progressively better and better. I could have fished a more cautious match and \u2018might\u2019 have scraped 30-50lb, but that wouldn\u2019t have done me any good. I attacked it too much and failed. Thanks for coming. Well done to all the framers! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I had to feel for league leader Steve Cooke who had a worse day than me, catching just 5lb off a peg he (and I) really fancied in the shape of peg 19. That cost him the title and highlights just how much the venue had switched off. One person\u2019s loss is another person\u2019s gain, so very well done to the new UK Champion Ben Bell, who fished well all through the league and is a very worthy champion.<\/p>\n
Over the four rounds I\u2019ve had one great performance, one good one and two shockers to end up 32nd out of 80. Can\u2019t win \u2018em all. Maybe next year?<\/p>\n
One final thing is the sad news that one of the anglers had all his gear nicked out of his van in the car park during the presentation. I don\u2019t know what the answer is to all these break ins but someone needs to deal with the lowlife scum who keep doing it. Even if they were caught I\u2019m not sure the punishment would fit the crime… \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday was the final round of the UK Champs held at Barston. For some reason it fished really badly for most; even those lucky enough with the luxury of an empty peg to one...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barston-lakes","category-uk-champs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2934,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions\/2934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonarthur.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}