This was the 15th fishing of this special charity match, A match that I won back in 2010 and I was keen to get my name back on the Cup. But it was only to be section win this year   

The draw for this match is different. Once your name is drawn from the cup you then have to pick the peg you wish to fish from. My name came out about halfway through and the current flyers had already been picked. I plumbed for peg 8. This is an OK peg that can produce so I was fairly happy. 

The Jubilee pool is a club water, it isn’t stocked like a commercial but it does contain some large carp and you don’t need many fish to frame. But with nearly every peg in, it was going to be a hard match. 

I decided to fished hard 8mm pellet on the pole straight out in front of me, 8mm meat into the left margin by some lilly pads and corn to the right under an over hanging tree. I fed this lines and started on the method feeder while these line settled down and hopefully drew in a few fish. The method feeder didn’t produce so I went onto the pellet line early where I’d been pinging in 6mm’s. It’s was also slow but after an hour I began to get a few bites. Knowing I wouldn’t need many fish I preserved here and I soon caught a couple of Carp. I’d been on this pole line for over two hours now and with this pool being very shallow, at least 2 foot deep I felt I needed to stop hovering the pole over the fishes heads. I began to look into the left and right margins but no bites came after 20 minutes. So I returned to the rested pellet line and caught a carp straight away and a couple of big Skimmers around 2lb a piece. So resting this line worked. I then began to rotate my 3 poles lines. The pellet line produced another 3 Carp in this time. 

It was going into the final hour now and I couldn’t get a bite. So I opened up a new short meat line, cad potting in 8mm cubes of meat every 10 minutes. After half an hour I went over the meat line and caught another Carp and another good Skimmer before the end of the match. This gave me 7 carp and 3 Skimmers at the weigh in. Unfortunately only one of the carp was a lump so I already knew my name wasn’t going onto the cup this year. But there was always a chance of a section win. Luckily the match winner came from my section weighing in 62lb. He’d found the lumps!! and I won the section by default with 27lb 6oz.   

Pellet Rig – Nick Gilbert 0.2g XT Finesse Power pole float set up on 0.17mm Guru N-Gauge mainline with a small bulk of no.9 stotz’s with one no.10 dropper shot above a size 14 Guru SLWG banded Ready rig on a 14-18 Nick Gilbert Ambercore elastic.   

A Barbecue and raffle followed the match where anglers fishing, friends and the Davis family all donated to the charity fund, as normal for St Richards Hospice. Martha Davis was on hand to present her fathers Cup to the winner as she has done so for the previous 14 years of her life. This year saw a new name on the Charity Cup as Ray Nosworthy, won the match and was presented the cup by Martha. 

Ray weighed in 61lb 15oz from peg J7. 2nd placed was Steve Foster, last years winner with 54lb 12oz from J19 and James Gardner finished in 3rd with 54lb 3oz from J12. Sections winners were, Billy Pitman 49lb 12oz (J1) Phil Seedhouse 27lb 6oz (J8) Chris Taylor 42lb 5oz (J16) Paul Sloss 19lb 4oz (J24) and Robin Ballard 13lb 8oz (W15)

To this date, this Charity match has raised well over £10,000 for St Richards Hospice in Grant’s name.