with KINGFISHER

THE Pennine Winter League was back in East Lancashire last weekend, with the Clayton-le Moors to Rishton section of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal providing a stiff challenge for the 72 anglers.

The cold certainly had made the roach even less co-operative than they had been the previous week in Blackburn and many more of them were to suffer the ignominy of a dry net.

They really had nothing to be ashamed of, for few venues are more difficult after a sharp frost or two than our canal.

Despite being so hard, the canal did produce a decent weight or two, though much less than the organisers could have expected when they booked this usually prolific section.

The league leaders, Tri-Cast Rochdale Black, suffered another disappointment and surrendered another seven points to their nearest challengers, Profish UK Gold.

Profish won on the day with their top performer being local man Ray Winterbottom, who weighed in a very creditable 3-11-8 for a well earned fifth place.

The result means that, with just one match left, his team have an outside chance of snatching the title from Tri-Cast, who still hold a fourteen point advantage at the top.

The individual match winner was Alan Crook, ProFish UK Black, who was at the Rishton end of the section where he quickly found some small roach willing to take his breadpunch.

This he presented down the centre but, having fed caster across at the outset, he found some much better quality roach when he switched his attack.

A return of 6-1-8 was the result of his efforts and was sufficient to take the top money by a comfortable margin from the runner-up. He was Leeds Angling's Steve Thorne who, pegged close to the winner, used similar tactics for a similar net of fish that totalled 5-2-0.

Springview have been overtaken at the head of the Wigan AA Winter League by Liverpool AS, to whom they came a close second in the fourth round last weekend.

This league is a very close affair now, with at least three teams now likely to be in the final shake-up, maybe more!

Following their promotion to Division One last year, Octoplus Blackburn have found the going a little tough, but they had their best result of the campaign last week, fiishing just one point behind their Springview 'mates' in third place.