David's end peg

Day 1 went relatively well for ULSTER managing 2nd overall on the day and only 1 point behing home province MUNSTER. It also ended with a nice Chinese in Macroom and an early night fro a few of us.

With a change/rotation in pegs, LEINSTER were guaranteed an end peg draw in each setion today after being stuck in the middle yesterday. It was between ULSTER and MUNSTER who got the other end peg in each section but unfortunately we lost out and MUNSTER got another end peg draw for DAY 2.

DAY 2 and the capatin decided to keep the same anglers on the same stretches but still having to draw for pegs. It was sections 1, 2 or 3 that myself, Gavin & Jack were drawing for again and it ended up with the same draw as the previous morning. Gavin on the first section, Jack in the middle Section and myself on the 3rd section.

I ended up 1 peg to the left of where I was yesterday which only produced 2Kilo odd but the main threat was the Leinster angler on the end peg to my left. It was THE 1 peg to draw today and I had for company Mark Leonard who I fished with on the Irish Home Nations Team over in Scotland.

The feeder was going to be the main line of attack today so a 2nd feeder rod went up and only 1x 7m to hand whip went up not expecting to catch much on it after yesterdays experience.

I plumbed up again with a 1oz bomb and got a count of 8 seconds today - an extra 1ft of water where it levels off. I gambled and stuck at 25 turns whilst the 2 anglers either side of me went slightly further. I cliped up the 2nd rod at 35 turns to go 1-2yds past the anglers either side of me, just as a safety measure.

Groundbait:

1kg VDE Gold Pro Bream, 2pts Coarse Brown Crumb, some vanilla power additive, 2pts of Black crumb to darken the mix.

I had the chop worm on standby but wasn’t going to chop any until I really needed it. I wanted to go for a positive Skimmer/Bream approach from what i’d learnt yesterday.

On the all in I started with a XL LARGE 28g Fox feeder crammed with caster and plugged either end witht the groundbait mix. I put on double maggot, same as yesterday but then decided to put a third on to stop line spin. An indication first chuck put an end to my prebaiting period and I decided to fish from the off but casting regulary.

After the first 40 minutes I still found myself on the XL Feeder but had a few big skimmers around 1lb in the net. At that rate I would run out of caster half way through the match so I switched a little later than planned to the usual 30g Tony Burke feeder.

I had 1 big skimmer before Mark had any and then he matched me fish for fish during the first hour but a couple of mistakes by Mark ment he started to slip behind. The Munster angler to my right also had a couple of big skimmers but I was ahead at this stage.

I stuck to 3 red maggots on the hook and cramming the caster in. Every bite was positive and resulted in a big skimmer.

The 3rd hour was a bit of a disaster, the skimmers had disappeared. I tried introducing pinkie to see if it would work but it didn’t, much the same effects as yesterday. Worm on the hook produced a couple of skimmer and roach but it had slowed down alot. I went back to cramming in the caster and the skimmers soon fond their way back and the last hour I managed to add half a dozen more 1lb skimmers to end up with 40 fish, 10 of them Roach/hybrids around 2-8oz.

Mark started to catch well for the last 2 hours and was catching me up, especially during my bad hour where I could only look on as the anglers either side of me were catching big skimmers relatively steady. This kept me going and made me change a few few things in order to get teh skimmers back and they eventually did.

After the 5 hours I thought it was going to be close enough between myself and Mark but I had a sneeky feeling that I was safe enough.

Every peg on the 3 sections nearly doubled the weight from the previous day. When it came to my section, peg 7 weighed in 9Kilo, only 1 Kilo more than I had yesterday which I was happy about. Next up was me and my 30 skimmers and 10 bits put 13kilo odd on the scales. Happy days! Mark was next and put a respectably 12 Kilo on the scales, only 1.5Kilo behind me.

Gavin managed to win his section today with 11kg along with myself and Jack 3rd.

Back at the Pub News filterd in that ULSTER had won 7 of the 10 sections so our hopes were high until the official weigh sheets arrived back. Not bad considering we all had the middle peg in every section!

An hour later ULSTER had done it, a total of 33pts over the 2 days, MUNSTER in 2nd with 42pts and LEINSTER in 3rd with 45pts.