This is a pretty unique competition

This is a pretty unique competition – devised by chairman Mike Gleeve, in which competitors go out to fish the match not knowing who is in their team of four! I believe that the main proviso is that when the teams are drawn, two anglers in the same boat cannot be in the same team. There must also be one bank angler in the team of four that fish the competition.This all leads to a most interesting situation, as when you see an unknown angler doing well, you hope that he is in your team, although the chances are that he isn’t! There is also a prize for the top individual angler on both bank and boat.On Sunday the fishing was tough. Only a few anglers caught fish from the bank and no one had more than one trout. So it was down to whoever had the largest trout. That honour went to Pete Bessell who connected with and successfully landed a rainbow trout of 4lbs 12oz, a superb trout in great condition. Top boat spot went to one of only three anglers to manage to catch their eight fish limit, and it was Tony Baldwin who managed to get his eight fish by five o’clock and therefore had two pounds to add to his weight of fish.There were superb prizes on offer for this event. I will run through the six winning teams with the prizes that they won. There was very little between the top team and the sixth team – just a fraction over six pounds – which amounts to about four of the Chew trout!In sixth place were Barry Hooper, Jon Matthews, Dave Wheeler and Gary Ware with 32lbs 1oz. Dave Wheeler was mainly responsible for this team’s success as he caught 7 of their trout for 18lbs 10oz! A fine Bristol Water bass bag was their reward.Your correspondent’s team filled fifth spot. They weighed in 32lbs 6oz and I was fortunate enough to have been one of the anglers who caught eight trout. Making up the team were Paul Jackson, Alan Smith and Dev Stickley. A Cortland 444 line was awarded to each member of the team.Mike Sargent, Tony Wright, Andy Cottam and Richard Walker filled fourth spot – and they earned a fly fishing waistcoat with their weight of 33lbs 10oz. Andy Cottam had a limit of trout by 5.30 – all on red dries in Heron’s Green. I watched him catch several of his fish and fully expected him to win the individual section, though his last fish, as often happens, took longer for him to catch than he hoped!Tony Baldwin helped to gain third place for his team that included Dave Green, Russ Rowbotham and Colin Oram; they totalled 35lbs 5oz. Their reward was an Orvis Battenkill reel.Leading the team in second place with a catch of seven trout was the ever-consistent John Braithwaite, who caught seven trout for just over 17lbs. Gary Hayden, John Timothy and Denis Collar supported John. Their 35lbs 7oz earned them a Reddington rod! The winning team proved that you do not need to have a top angler on the side! The team consisting of Keith Brown, Roger Stenner, James Mills and Rod Newton totalled 38lbs 4oz. Their prize was a superb Wychwood fishing coat. The buffet was as good as any that have been provided since the new lodge has been in place and the general feeling was that although the day had been generally tough fishing, the fact that most anglers saw a few moving fish in the last half hour or so, had made it an enjoyable day out! I fished my knockout competition at the same time and had a good time with Paul Roach who has been setting the European trout scene on fire! I managed to get to the next round and I believe that I now have to fish against Dave Monks!

Next week I will report on the last two rounds of the Peregrine/Nomad.