Sunday 5th July - S W Super League Round 1, King Sedgemoor Drain

This very competitive League has 17 teams of 4 this year, all the venues are natural so there is definitely an appetite for this branch of the sport (in previous years it was teams of 8)
Although the planning takes place some months ahead final adjustments had to be made to comply with COVID-19 guidelines i.e........

Social distancing
Safe weighing in procedures
Electronic payment of entrance fee's / pools / payouts following the match
Emailing of team sheets
Draw via I T Conferencing
Results electronically

It did appear to be a bit of a challenge as some people representing teams were not used to or familiar with on-line banking etc but all sorted in time.

The draw was done via a ''Zoom'' Conference Call set up by Mark Treasure and Administered by Dave Micklewright with an attendance by Andy Jane and myself as adjudicators as well as calling out random numbers and letters.
The results of the draw were not sent out to team captains until 17:00 on the Saturday.

So in summary no mass meet up on the morning of the match, all admin done in advance and no cash handled. All competitors had to do was turn up at 09:00 on match day and go to their allocated peg.
The downside is it's a massive admin task for Dave.

Team for the day was ...
Ivan Currie (c)
Chris Hook
Sam Johnson
Leigh Wakefield

I had already notified the guys on the Saturday evening what peg they would be on but we still met up at Sedgemoor Services at 07:45 for a chat.

I was in A Sect peg 14.
Chris in B Sect peg B1
Sam in C Sect peg C5
Leigh in D Sect peg D9

We tried to work out the approach based on the previous weeks practice and what was caught within a few pegs of where we were today.
A plan had been worked out during the week and fine tuned as far as possible by Sunday.

I had never fished above Parchey Bridge before but based on the previous weeks match you wanted A1 to A3, my peg A14 did not appear to have any form.

It was a bit narrower than where I was last week and did look nice, but, they all do.

On my left was DGL's Martyn Howard who was also below me last week, to my right Ben Rendall and below him Mike Bernstsen, the end peg was Lee Trivett.

In was quite breezy and straight into our faces but I did set up a waggler just in case but never used it. A feeder rod for across but also not used. Long pole line with 2 gram and a 6 metre line with 1 gram.

Usual approach on the ''all in'' feeding pole lines and started on the 6 metre line first. As expected bites straight away and to cut a long story short apart from a brief spell long, brief due to the wind getting stronger I stayed short most of the match feeding regular balls of hemp, caster and pinkie. Lots of bites all day long from small fish and no pike trouble.

I didn't count them but must have had around 200 fish and weighed 15-4 which just got me last in the Section money.

Martyn to my left had a big 16lb, Ben 13lb and the 2 end pegs 20lb and 18lb.

So 15 points from 17 and a pick up, happy with that in a competitive Section.

Sam also done well catching 2 tench on the pole plus bits for 12lb odd and 3rd in section (15 points), Chris and Leigh not so good.

Todays winner Mike Bernstsen

League after Round 1

Steverton on Wednesday then back on the KSD again for Round 2 next Sunday.