With a few cancellations at the last minute a quick revamp of the way things had to be run and we were on our way.

27 Anglers had turned up so I quickly made the decision to walk the bank and give my encouragement to everyone.

The decision had been made to let the highest bidder choose who they fished with and that honour went to Pete Bailey and he duly choose Darren Cox, ironic really as they were the two front runners of this years UK champs right up to the final whistle of the final round, they looked the team to beat until Pete pulled out pegs 102 and 103 in the middle of the match length.

full draw was

87 Andy Neale
88 Nigel Harrhy

90 Mark Bartlett
91 Grant Albutt

93 Andy May
94 Lee Werret

96 Kieron Rich
97 Andy Stones

99 Steve Ringer
100 Martin Spears

102 Pete Bailey
103 Darren Cox

105 Jon Arthur
106 Keith Haynes

108 Dave Lloyd
109 Simon Fry

111 Darren Bickerton
112 Daniel Tresigne

114 Chris Vandervliet
115 Wooper

117 Sean Ashby
118 Paul Law

120 Pete Taylor
121 Phil Ringer

123 Lewis Breeze
124 Geoff Ringer

With the weather changing virtually over night from T-shirts to waterproofs if was never going to be an out and out bagging match but Barston proved yet again that it is possibly the fairest venue with everyone catching a few fish.

Early front runners were Simon Fry,Phil Ringer and Nigel Harry, all catching fish on the method including a couple of lumps to Simon who was throwing a long long way and hitting a mark close to the Island with laser guided precision.

At the halfway stage very few fish were being caught on the pole and the anglers fishing this method solely were falling behind. This was making the pairs contest interesting due to Simon and Nigels partners only setting up a pole.

One point of interest was the amount of F1’s that were being lost on the way back to the bank. One anglers suffering more than most was Chris Vandervliet probably down to the fact that he was still moaning about the powergum on his feeder breaking as he went to feed at the all in….

The five hours went all too quick and with Andy Neale catching on the pole it seemed that himself and venue owner Nigel would be the first ever Barston/ Birmingham childrens hospital pairs winners and this seemed to be the case when they put a total of 105lbs 8 ozs onto the scales.

With the next 6 pairs not coming within 30lbs it looked over and done with, especially when Dave Lloyd put a meagre 12lb on the scales meaning his partner Simon needed over 90lbs to take away the honours, as soon as he bought out his nets everyone knew that it was going to be close and three weighs later and 96lb 2 oz on the board Dave and Simon were the first winners of this good cause.

I would like to thank everyone for turning up and Nigel for allowing us to use this fantastic venue.

We raised over £2500 towards the Childrens hospital

Hopefully it will be even better next year with the sun shining.