Winter League Match 3 Results
A beautiful day for fishing in Athy!
With a dry day ahead, anglers started arriving for the 8:30am meetup for the 3rd match of the Athy & District Anglers Club Winter League. 10 anglers in total would fish this match in The Marina club grounds. Pegs 2 & 3 were removed from the draw having provided poor fishing on the past 2 matches and peg 15 which was cleaned during the last cleaning was added to the pool. Pegs were drawn at 8:45am and everyone set about getting themselves ready!
Arguably the only way to get ready for a winter league match!
Feed yourself before the fish!
All in was called at 9:50 and the match kicked off! Strong starts were had across the board with most anglers fishing the pole between 8 and 12 meters. There are superb Perch present in the Marina at this time of year, which saw lots of chopped worm being fed into the swims to try and entice them in. Worm on the hook wasn’t quite delivering so red maggot was favored around the pegs to get the fish on the hook.
It wasn’t long before the flurry of activity caught the attention of the Pike who make the Marina their home. This brought lulls into many of the swims as the pike went hunting. A few large ones were seen topping further out into the Marina, with more than 5 jack Pike being caught (accidently). A record of 6 hooklengths were snapped for one angler and the winds brought a few rigs lost to tangles for the rest. Keepnets were attacked and defended with landing nets as the battles continued!
Confusingly, at 14:20, a call of “All Out” was heard across the Marina. This confused most of us, since the match was actually running to 15:20. It seems the isolation got to Des, who was all alone on Peg 1 on the far side of the Marina, and a 14 does suspiciously look like a 15 in high winds (or so we were told). So after 2 minutes of everyone checking the time, All In was called again!
The latter half of the match was slow for most, Pike had made the rapid pace of bites from the morning a thing of the past. Nonetheless the anglers persevered! All Out was called (again) at 15:20 and weigh ins commenced.
1st Place
First place went to Chick with an excellent 13lb 8ozs
2nd Place
Second place went to Tommy with a very close 12lb 7ozs
3rd Place
Third place went to Des with a fantastic Peg 1 weight of 10lb 7ozs
4th Place
Fourth place went to Chris with 9lb 14ozs
Congratulations to all of our winners and a huge thank you to Griffin Hawe for sponsoring this match! A great day had by all, what else would you be doing but fishing in Athy :)
A special mention to Paula and this hole a pike ripped into her keepnet! Had it not been for this hole, it’s believed by many that Paula would have won this match…
