News

Counter shows some venues have less than 10 tickets remaining. . . The Angling Trust has added a counter facility to the Riverfest 2013 page on its website which has revealed that some venues have as few as seven tickets remaining.

Matrix back Tidal Trent Festival. Following on from good turnouts on the river last year, River Trent match organiser, Alan Henry has announced that the Tidal Trent Festival will be running again in 2013. He explained “Sadly last year we had to call the festival off after the first day due to the river flooding, after what we now know to be one of the wettest years on record. Even with the river out of sorts though, we still had 45 anglers enter the Festival.

Close fought battle in Soar Valley Winter LeagueAny angler who thought that the days of close fought team competitions are dead, should check out the latest result of the Soar Valley Winter League- where Matrix Dynamite Trentmen and the newly entered Leicester Sensas are having an extremely tight fought battle. After taking an early lead in the first round, defending champions Trentmen were sitting pretty at the top of the league. The second round saw a dramatic change however, as Leicester made the most of a brilliant draw to win the round with 27pts- and more importantly open up a 14 point lead over Trentmen in the overall league stakes. The third round saw Leicester further their lead, though it was a much closer result, with a moody river seeing both teams yielding some poor section scores.

Preston ace secures place in Match This Final. Preston Innovations England feeder team captain Tommy Pickering has won a place in the £50,000 Maver Match This Final, after winning the qualifier at The Oaks Lakes in North Yorkshire. Tommy drew Peg 25 on Beech Pool, and left his feeder rod in his bag – opting to fish pole and pellet shallow at just seven metres. Offering a banded 4mm pellet over 4mm feed pellets, Tommy ended the match with a winning 125-06-00 to finish a clear 20lb ahead of the rest of the field.

Drennan KO Cup, The ultimate test? There are some fantastic events in the angling calendar year on year, but what really proves to be the ultimate test of skill and bottle? We have 130 peg one day qualifiers where ultimately it’s down to who draws well and can keep their bottle for a full five hours without cracking under the pressure of the occasion. We also have events such as White Acres Festivals and the UK Champs where consistency is key against top opposition! But in my opinion Match Fishing’s own Drennan Knockout Cup is head and shoulders above any other competition in that it’s an invited field of the very best the country has to offer, held over a number of months and equally gruelling rounds across a multitude of different venues meaning a ‘one trick pony’ is most unlikely to progress very far in the competition, if at all! In recent years I’ve concentrated on Fish’O’Mania and making two finals along the way was great, but with ticket allocation becoming more and more difficult I found myself with a lot of time on my hands to dedicate to something else this year, and having never been able to give the Knockout Cup much time with regards to practise, it became the focus of my year. The first round at Lindholme Lakes will probably go down as one of my finest wins to date, I cannot think of a better 110 peg match to win, a red letter day of the highest order. But from what to me is a ‘standard’ day at a top quality commercial fishery, we was then thrust into the world of canal fishing now this to me personally was going to be a big challenge – I used to do loads of canal fishing and really enjoyed it, but with the main events being held on commercials I hadn’t visited one for a good few years.

Garbolino ace makes young anglers day. Garbolino and Bait Tech backed match ace, Steve Tucker made one young anglers day at a recent match- by giving him the rod that he had won as a prize in the competition! The young anglers family were so touched by the former Fish O Mania Finalists generosity, that they wrote to Match Fishing Magazine singing his praises. Mum, Trudie Howard explained: “My fiancee and son recently fished a weekend of matches at Revels Fishery in Dorset. The event was to celebrate the venues 25th birthday and was to be my son, thirteen year old Brenden’s first match.