This was our first club match 0n the pond this year and all competitors were eagerly awaiting the draw.  It was nice to see some new faces fishing, including junior member Olly Flindall who fished a great match.  Last year the pegs to draw were 2, 6, 13, 14, 20, 32, 37 and 38, so plenty of good pegs to draw.  The Match got off to a great start for Craig Logan on peg 11 – catching a carp first drop in fishing shallow – quickly followed by Matt Gaettto on peg 13.  Matt started off fishing short on pole while priming his 16m line with 6mm pellets.  He caught Carp steadily on this line both on the deck and then shallow, making no mistakes to win the match. Second place went to Craig Logan on peg 11 – Craig fished pole at 13m using pellet both on the deck and shallow and fishing feeder to the island with pin point accuracy.  Third place was Craig Radford on peg 28 – Craig had been looking forward to the match for weeks and now the temperature was above 20 degrees he felt it was safe for him to go out.  He was disappointed with his draw but all that mid week practice paid off and he fished a great match.  Overall the pond fished well with average weights around 30lb

1st  Matt Gaetto – 92lb

2nd  Craig Logan – 69lb 2oz

3rd  Craig Radford – 54lb 14oz

4th  Barry Dent – 47lb 11oz

5th  Phil Kent – 47lb 7oz

Please can all anglers fishing the match next week have the correct money and remember to keep 2m distance where possible.

The club would like to thank all competitors for complying with the new social distancing rules set out to make this match happen. It’s a thankless job, now made even more difficult with Covid-19.  We would like to thank the majority of anglers who took the time to thank us on how we ran the match. Also, a big thanks needs to go Dave Harris for spending days at the waters clearing space for parking.  It was great to see so many new and returning Stanton members taking part.

As this was the first match on the canal for some years it was unknown as to the best area to draw. The most fancied area was around the carpark pegs – 18, 19, 20 – as this is the most popular part of the canal. The match got off to a good start with Adam Logan at peg 9 and Matt Gaetto on peg 12, both getting early Bream. It soon became apparent there was no point fishing for bits as odd Bream and Tench started to be caught. With 3hrs of the match gone it looked like everyone was still in with a chance with several anglers now having caught Bream, with Adam and Matt out in front. The 4th hour was a struggle for most with the high temperatures but Match Secretary Ady Knighton was showing his class by putting 2 more Bream in the net. Danny Gaetto was starting to get bites despite the motor cross Grand Prix taking place right by him… As an aside, Danny would also like to say thanks Dave Harris for forgetting where he left his car keys that morning, which freed up the space for him to fish. The last hour saw Danny putting two more Bream in the net as well as losing a couple. The ever popular Craig Logan on peg 11 was cursing 4 lost fish in the lillies but managed to get a Tench and a Bream in the last hour to add to the 2lb of bits. At the final whistle it was clear that Adam had won but it was all down to the weigh in to find out the top 5.

1st  Adam Lagan – 17lb 4oz

2nd  Ady Knighton –  11lb 12oz +4oz casters!

3rd  Craig Logan – 11lb 9oz

4th  Danny Gaetto – 10lb 9oz

5th  Matt Gaetto – 10lb 40z

We had a good turn out considering the bad weather the night before with 14 in total fishing the match. This meant there was plenty of room for all anglers with everyone having a spare peg to one side. Because of the bad weather and this being the first match on Privates this year we were unsure of the best areas to draw and whether the newly stocked fish would feed. It turned out to be a hard match all over the pond with bites hard to come by but this also made for a fair match and gave everyone a chance of winning. It was nice to see the top 3 came from different areas of the pond. First place went to Danny Gaetto – Danny had drawn peg 13 and made the decision to fish with pellet and corn which turned out to be a good one as he caught small carp, F1s and the odd skimmer. Adam drew on the road side of the pond and caught manly silvers, fishing casters short on the pole. Jonathon fished the pole over ground bait, catching small skimmers, the odd F1 and a bonus 3lb bream.

1st Danny Gaetto:  11lb 12oz – Peg 13

2nd Adam Logan:  10lb 8oz – Peg 16

3rd Jonathon Leivers:  7lb 3oz – Peg 4