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This week Joe has been back to Tunnel Barn where things haven’t quite gone as planned!


The third round of the Tunnel Barn Winter League has come and gone and I can only say we are all very disappointed with our result! But more of that later.

The league is really picking up pace now and with the very best anglers at this type of fishing attending, you sure get punished for a bad performance!

In the first two rounds we have had relatively good draws and done the business from them however for some reason, despite turning up 20 minutes before the official draw time, we were still nearly last to draw! This is not normally a problem but the rival teams at the top of the league had drawn very well and there were very few favourable pegs left in the bag.

My draw saw me going to Peg 5 on the Top pool. This is a lake that I know little about but knew that a simple pellet approach would probably be a safe bet. Top pool has hordes of small silvers making maggots almost redundant so it was going to be a simple match. The other three draws were where the wheels fell off though, our star man and top performer so far Steve Ringer drew House Pool Peg 1 which is an absolutely dire draw in all conditions! Jon Arthur drew New 44, which is a wonderful peg in summer but has been devoid of life recently and Paul Bick drew Peg 1 on Extension, which was a decent draw on paper.

I had a job to do though and set about my Peg 5 task. This is a huge peg in that you have loads of open water t go at that is all pretty much the same depth. This suited me as it meant I could chase the fish around the peg easily without the need for loads of rigs. There is an island in the peg, some 19metres away. I readied two rigs for there, one for dobbing bread and one for fishing pellets. Hopefully I wouldn’t need them but they were there in case I was up the creek!

I started my match at six sections and waited all of one minute for a bite and my first fish was soon in the keepnet. I had 11 more of its friends in the first 45 minutes and things were going rather well! After a long chat with venue expert Stu Palser, I decided to go against my normal theories of dotting the float right down to a pimple and actually fished with the entire bristle sticking out of the water. I had been missing a lot of bites in previous matches and thought it was well worth a try. Well with 12 fish in the net and only two missed bites I was loving it.

After an hour the skimmers had invaded the peg and it was time to move. This is where the frustration crept in. I fully expected the fish to have just backed off but no matter where I went in the peg I couldn’t find the fish again. And all of a sudden that hour had flown by with very little to show for it.

I needed a push so decided on a quick dob to the island. My end of the lake was fishing very slowly for some reason and I was definitely ahead of everyone that I could see. I tucked my rig right into a likely looking spot and the float buried instantly, I connected with what was clearly a decent fish before disaster struck! A deafening CRACK, and I was left with about 30cm of pole in my hand whilst 18.7metre of pole laid on the surface of the lake without carp attached! What a nightmare. I quickly shipped it back, laughed off the breakage and got back on with the job in hand.

I decided to bodge the section back together by ramming a half extension up the very broken 19m section and try again this time with pellets. Their were a few fish present but they were very small and the ship behind me was very awkward, not ideal for building a weight of small F1s so after six fish I abandoned the idea.

By this point I had yet to explore the left hand side of the peg where it was actually a few inches deeper. This area definitely held a few fish but it was a case of catching three fish before I had to switch lines, it was hard work but at least I was getting bites.

The rest of the match flew by and I was reasonably happy with what I had caught. My 41lb was enough for 4th on the lake but several anglers beat me on the Club pool (why do I keep drawing the split section!) but it was as good as I could have hoped for.

When I got back to the clubhouse though I soon realised that the bad draw had wreaked havoc with our chances. Steve beat just two anglers from his horrendous peg. Bicky suffered the same fate and simply couldn’t get any bites! Jon fared a little better and came 8th on his lake but sadly our team slumped to 16th out of 18 on the day! And dropped two places in the overall league tables.

Last years winners, Banbury Gunsmiths took the win on the day with a great performance, their team consisting of Pete Caton, Stu Palser, Steve Townsend and Mark Pollard. Steve Townsend actually took the match win individually with a stunning 138lb from the Club Pool!

So for us it was a disappointing day to say the least but with seven rounds left to go there are a hell of a lot of points to be won and lost and I’m sure we will be there or thereabouts at the end!