with KINGFISHER

VERY generous sponsorship by Hyndburn Borough Council ensured that there was a full house of 49 for Sunday's Hyndburn & Blackburn AA open match on Rishton Reservoir.

The winner, teAMS H&B member and carpet fitter by trade Andrew Filben, pocketed a cool £450 for his efforts on a very difficult day indeed.

Filben decided to tackle the venue in typical fashion, as did the majority of the others, with maggot presented at about 40 metres range with groundbait feeder tactics.

Bream were, of course, the target species but the general run of fish were on the small side for Filben with one notable exception.

That came in the form of a single three pounder, the most significant fish of the match, as it turned out.

His final tally was a fairly meagre 13lbs exactly but that was, thanks to that 'bonus' bream, enough to beat his nearest challenger by just 1-4-0 that angler was Fisherman's Way tackle dealer Dave Chadwick, who just happened to be one of the very few to try something a little different.

He decided to forsake the almost obligatory feeder, in favour of a six metre whip approach.

With maggot on the hook and loose feeding sparingly, he managed to amass a tidy net of roach and perch to take the runners-up spot away from another teAMS H&B angler, A Lord, who was very close with 11-10-0.

Big money was the attraction at Hebden Bridge as well, where 64 anglers turned up to try their hand at drawing a Golden Peg.

Unfortunately for Team Warburtons angler Keith Emsley his 181 (Red Acre) was not amongst them, so he had to make do with the normal pools money for a very decent and comfortable win.

Not surprisingly maybe he made good use of his sponsor's product, along with a caster or two, to take a nice net of roach and skimmers.

The runner-up, John Christie, included a 2lb perch amongst the skimmers in his 7-15-0 net from 188 and this was just enough, a mere 7 ounces to snatch the spot from the grasp of Ian Lathom.

That match was a bit tougher for most of the competitors than they had expected. The Rochdale Canal is a fickle place but compared to the few who turned up for the Todmorden AC match, they had a good time. Todmorden's Station House length was in dour form, with just 3-7-0 enough to secure a win for Frank Szakerley.

The commercial carp fisheries fished surprisingly well at the weekend, considering the cooler temperatures.

There were some decent individual big weights for pleasure anglers, approaching the 'ton' at Bradshaw Hall, and matchmen were pleased with some very even contests.

Copthorne has certainly been improving, in terms of being more even, with plenty of pegs capable of producing a winning weight. On Sunday, for the Premier League match, it was peg 20 that produced a few better fish, to around 6lbs, for the winner Stuart Greenwood, who put a creditable total of 53-8-0 on the scale.

He worked with paste at 15 metres but the next two anglers, significantly for you pleasure anglers to note I suggest, both pinned their faith in catmeat. To emphasise what I said about the pegs they were on pegs 20 and 36. Burnley's Ray Ayre managed to take 5th place, with 36-10-0.