IT CAME as no surprise to the 84 anglers gathered together in Blackburn, for the final round of the Hyndburn & Blackburn AA teams Spring League, which team took the £500 for the overall winners, but the poor form of the canal did.

The four from Ted Carter's Southport went to the top of the league, you might remember, after the second round and never looked back.

They have never looked like relinquishing that lead and second place last Sunday gave them a winning margin over runners up Van den Eynde of 50 points.

Overnight frosts were blamed for the desperately poor form of the Clayton le Moors sections, though there is probably more to it than simply that and the individual winner, Colne canal expert Paul Smith (especially with punched bread), was pegged behind Tesco in Blackburn.

Knowing that the length had not produced enough fish to win any of the previous five matches, suggested to Paul that his draw was a poor one.

He has never given anything but his best shot and when he caught quickly a section win looked to be there for the taking.

He cupped in very small amounts of liquidised bread to keep the small roach coming throughout the match. He alternated swims; at six, eight and ten metres, for an all-roach catch weighing 5-4-0.

That he had no fish bigger than six ounces in his net shows you how busy he was and his total was not only enough to win his section but, to the surprise of himself and many others, it was enough to win the entire match fairly comfortably.

The Graham & Brown section had a bit of form in previous rounds and produced the runner-up, teAMS H&B angler Boyden Krupniski who brought a different net of fish to the scales.

He, like Paul Smith, pinned his faith in the punch and his reward was also small roach. He also, most significantly, included two skimmer bream in his catch and his 4-13-7 total made him a fairly comfortable second.

Closest behind him was Danny Martin, (Van den Eynde), with 4-2-11 and he was followed by Burnley's Andy Shirtliffe whose small fish catch went 3-5-0.

Paul Smith's team-mates, in Tri-Cast Rochdale Black, were unable to reach the high standard set by him and it was left to their Blue team to take the day's honour.

Ted Carter's Southport were 15 points behind them, but that made no significant difference to the overall picture.

It was a much tighter finish for the overall runner's up position, as expected, and it was appropriate that Van den Eynde's significant efforts after an appalling start should be rewarded in this respect.

Bradshaw Hall No 4 Lodge was in relatively poor form last week and I am not convinced anglers going there this week will be better rewarded.

That applies to all commercial fisheries really - just down to the time of year and the ambient temperature, although there will always be one to buck the trend and that might be Steve Hall, teAMS H&B, who was second with just 8-10-0 in Saturday's silver fish only match, won with 12-8-0 and that weight was doubled the following day when carp were allowed.

You would hardly credit it really, but bloodworm was the key for the winner on Saturday (along with caster), but Dave Williams would say that.

Sunday's winner used corn, in conjunction with a groundbait feeder, for an all-carp net.

Greenhalgh Lake produced amazing catches a few of weeks ago, which have proved to be the exception, rather than the rule. Anglers on here were brought back to reality two weeks ago and last week's best weights were along the same lines.

The method used to take the 44-15-0 winning weight was corn, in conjunction with crumb feeder, is of greater significance to pleasure anglers than the actual weight itself.

Chorley Social stalwart Les Riding had a good weekend, starting with Saturday's Wigan AA match.

The match, with a disappointing 37 entries, was won from a peg at Halsall Bridge with a couple of bream for 6-5-4. The runner-up had one fish as did Les, but his was slightly bigger, at 2-10-8.

Each of those fish was taken with bread and that was Les' choice of bait for Sunday's 30-entry event at Parbold. There were no big fish in this one, with small roach the main target. Les needed only 1-11-15 of them to win -- and they were complaining about Clayton-le-Moors!

So it has to be a stillwater for everyone this week then, with the rivers closed for three months. I think that, unless you relish a struggle on the canal, a visit to a commercial will be the right choice. Which one is down to personal choice, with each having its own attraction.