Ron
was a founder
member of
Portsmouth DAS, and a keen match angler. This year his memorial
match was fished on one of
the clubs waters,
Lakeside, the IBM lake at Cosham. (Photo is Ron with a bag of Tench from Hilsea Moat) Ron
was a founder
member of
Portsmouth DAS, and a keen match angler. This year his memorial
match was fished on one of
the clubs waters,
Lakeside, the IBM lake at Cosham. (Photo is Ron with a bag of Tench from Hilsea Moat)
A few years ago the lake suffered a big fish kill
when a pollutant was accidentally released into one of the lakes
feeder streams. The timing couldn't have been worse because the lakes
Carp were getting ready to spawn and were in the feeder stream where
the pollution hit, and hundreds of Carp died. Since then the lake has
been slowly recovering and this year pleasure anglers have again been
catching quality Roach, Carp and Bream. To help with the
recovery the lake was stocked with Skimmers and Carp earlier this
year, and today’s match was an opportunity to see just well the
lake has recovered.
The weather was warm and overcast for the first half of the match, heavy rain for an hour in the middle, and then a bright sunny end to the day. The wind also couldn't make up it's mind on which way to blow. It started out as an Easterly then during the rain it swung round to a Westerly. Not ideal conditions, but plenty of fish were caught, and quite a few Carp were lost especially by the anglers in the early pegs in the reed beds.
Top weight on the day was Jim Tann with a bag of
Skimmers and Carp for 23-0-0. Jim drew peg 44 and caught on the long
pole over chopped Worm, 2nd Chris Gillott with 20-0-0 of Carp from the
margins in peg 54. Chris alternated between maggot and paste fished
close to the reeds on the inside.
3rd was Karl Smith with 19-1-0 of Skimmers and small Carp taken on
Waggler and maggot. Karl was on peg 41 and ended up fishing 3ft
over depth
to combat the tow. 4th was Ian Snook (Ron's son), with 18-1-0 of
Skimmers and Carp from peg 45. Ian fished the pole at 7m and alternated
between
maggot and paste on the hook over chopped worm. 5th Mick Duran with
16-10-0 of Carp from peg 60.
After the match Ian was rueful about the number of bites he missed on paste. If only he could have sorted it out he may have been able to achieve an ambition and win his Dad's memorial match.
Inset photo is match organiser Ian Snook (left) and match winner Jim Tann (right) receiving the Ron Snook memorial trophy.