A top five finish was Alan and Oliver Scotthorne’s target as they approached the final round of an enjoyable silverfish pairs series… but could they do it? Read on to find out…

The Preston Pole Fishing Pairs was originally set up to fish for the abundance of silverfish that are in our commercial fisheries. Only ‘natural baits’ are allowed in this event, so no pellets to cut down on the numbers of proper carp caught, which don’t count in these matches (although F1s do). With 39 pairs starting the first round at Barston Lakes, this was to be a well contested series run through the winter months, but a little disappointing as the year before 50 pairs had started in this well run event.

I fish with my son Oliver and our goal was to try to finish in the top five in this strong field. We had made a top 10 result the year before, learning loads, so we were really up for this challenge.

The first two rounds we just got it wrong, scoring a combined seven points and six points from our six-peg sections. We were down the leaderboard with two matches already gone and now needed some good results to get back in the hunt!

Round Three was at Messingham Sands near Scunthorpe and we should really have won this one. Oliver won his section, but I was 2nd on the Swan Pond wehre a win would have won us the day – but at least we were moving up the list. A 1st and a 4th on Round Four at Woodland View and Larford Lakes bought us right back up to 8th overall. With the last round at my local Lindholme Lakes I felt we could still finish in the top five with a solid performance.

The Final Round

I had a very interesting match, drawing peg 73 on Bonsai Lake. I felt it would be difficult to win this section with peg 84 being a real flyer to contend with. F1s live in this area all year round and I knew that I was probably just fishing for silvers in front of me. Added to this was the fact that the rest of my section were on a straight with the wind off their backs, while I was on a corner of a bend and catching the wind really badly. This made it really difficult to get good presentation across to the island.

I decided to feed a short line at around five metres by hand with maggots, but this peg is very shallow with less than a metre of depth all over the peg, so I didn’t fancy this area too much. Most anglers felt maggots were the best bait on Bonsai, but I had practiced on this lake on the Friday and really struggled with maggots but caught well on casters. I therefore elected to fish two lines across with this bait at 13 metres, about a metre or so short of the island. Using my Acolyte Carp pole with the top kits off my Acolyte pole I could really hang on in the ever increasing wind that was threatening to spoil the day!

Rigging Up

With the peg being very shallow I didn’t want to use a bodied float, so rigged up with a slim Drennan AS5 pencil float in a 0.2g size to see how it sat in the wind. I was amazed how well this float fished so set up four more AS5 floats; all pencils to cover all three swims, with the biggest float just 0.3g. These were all shotted with spread out No11 shot.

All my rigs had 0.93mm Supplex hooklengths with size 18 Silverfish Match hooks which I could use both maggots and casters on and also be capable of landing the odd F1 if I hooked any. Using a light No4 elastic ensured the fish didn’t come to the surface when I hooked them.

The Match

The line across to the right I fed half a pot of finely chopped worms and loose fed both lines across with catapulted casters. As I expected, it was a very slow start but eventually I started to catch odd roach. I then ticked over nicely, catching two bonus perch and a couple of ide of around 2lb each. I was starting to enjoy the fishing and working these two far lines.

With a good ripple on the water I had to fish most of my 15cm hooklength on the bottom and some bites from the bigger fish where just tiny lifts on the float. I fed maggots short all day but caught just one roach from this swim, confirming that I had fished the right bait across. Most of my bonus fish came from the swim where I had fed some chopped worm, including a couple of 1lb skimmers and two F1s in the last 10 minutes.

When the whistle finally blew I felt I had fished a good match in difficult conditions. At the finish I had fed two pints of casters and about a pint of chopped worms, plus two pints of maggots on the short line. Although I didn’t catch of this line I did feed it all match as sometimes F1s can appear really late in this area, but on this day it just didn’t happen.

When the scales arrived, my 26lb won the section with 21lb second off peg 84. I was over the moon when news filtered through that Oliver had also done well by coming 2nd off peg 69 on Laurels Lake with 20lb of F1s. I just hoped it would be enough to get us into the top five. We did, and we were both well pleased to finish 5th in this very strong field!

Matt Godfrey and Tom Scholey were the top pair on the day with two section wins while Des Shipp and Adam Wakelin managed to win the competition overall. Winning three of the rounds was a great achievement, so well done to both of them catching loads of fish in this great competition. I really hope we can get this event back up to 50 pairs next year, as then the winners of each round will pick up a £1,000 just for winning a round. Not a bad pickup with brilliant fishing to boot!