Fishing: Sheffield angler Stanton secures victory with one fish to spare

Park Angling Club member Paul Stanton triumphed on the Island Lake at Messingham Sands
Paul StantonPaul Stanton
Paul Stanton

It would have been a more comfortable match had there not been lily pads to both right and left hand sides of Stanton’s peg.

Catching carp running to 6lbs on straight bomb and later the feeder Stanton suffered more than a few mishaps as he tried to bully fish through the gap but he still sealed victory with one fish to spare.

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Result: 1. P Stanton 131-0; 2. B Harvey 125-0; 3. R Hill 111-0; 4. P Jackson 94-0; 5. C Ramsden 84-0; 6. K Roberts 74-0.

Simon GraysonSimon Grayson
Simon Grayson

Ranch Fishing Club

Sykehouse Fisheries, Stock Pond

A remarkably tight frame as far as the first 3 places go but after that weights slumped. Mark Smith nicked this with just 8oz to spare fishing dead red maggots in the margins. The next two places fell to contrasting methods, Spooner fishing shallow with pole and pellet while Bailey scored on pellet waggler.

Result: 1. M Smith 104-5; 2. P Spooner 103-13; 3. M Bailey 103-1; 4. B Stephenson 40-10; 5. K Walker 35-9; 6. W Cooper 33-8.

Arnies AC

Ferry Boat Fishery

Result: 1. Simon Grayson 37-12 (winner had carp and bream on the pole); 2. B Searles 19-8; 3. P Hattersley 18-14; 4. M Saxton 13-2; 5. M Bailey 11-5; 6. R Foster 8-6.

Arnies AC

Spring Vale Lakes, First Spring

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In-form Simon Grayson romped home catching ide and chub on caster at 11 metres on the pole before switching to a top two plus one section for some big carp on pellets close in.

Result: 1. S Grayson 149-8; 2. P Hattersley 67-6; 3. M Saxton 59-3; 4. R Wright 45-5; 5. M Swift 43-3; 6. S Winston 43-1.

Sothall AC

Little John Lakes, Friar Tuck Lake

Carp dominated as Fred Driver topped 155lbs fishing short on the pole with meat.

Result: 1. F Driver 155-6; 2. J Cheshire 108-9; 3. R Thompson 105-10; 4. A Bacon 96-0; 5. D Beckett 86-11; 6. M Buckler 71-5.

Woodseats Dale AC

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Kiveton Waters, Eves LakeRichard Bowler openly stated he’d like to draw Peg 25 and that’s exactly what he drew and never looked back fishing the fancied corner peg close to the margins with a top two plus two sections of pole to net carp to 4lbs on paste. Dave Elliott ran him close fishing shallow for mostly carp and the back-up weights were consistently good making for an excellent match.

Result: 1. R Bowler 82-14; 2. D Elliott 76-1; 3. R Mitchell 60-15; 4. R Colley 51-4; 5. S Alcock 44-11; 6. J Mellor 45-15.

Everest AC

Portland Waters, Four Islands Lake

Secretary’s Venue Verdict: 9 / 10

With four ‘ton’ weights backed by a couple of 90’s Four Islands was clearly in top form but even on days like this a good draw counts and Richard Goodrum made few mistakes after drawing the fancied inner ring Peg 21 where he caught carp on pole and banded pellet to the island before switching inside for a late run of margin fish.

Result: 1. R Goodrum 180-8; 2. S Easton 163-1; 3. R Steedon 106-1; 4. A Easton 101-10; 5. K Broadhead 97-11.

Walkley AC

Kiveton St Luke’s and Bluebell Wood Charity Match

Kiveton Hall Farm, Top and Bottom Lakes

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Wet and windy conditions didn’t dampen a turn-out of 35 anglers who collectively raised over £400 for these charitable causes. Eddie Buxton Narrowly edged out Jeff Clark catching carp with a small scoop feeder with pellets on the hook.

Result: 1. E Buxton 66-9; 2. J Clatk 64-8; 3. S Lucas 52-8; 4. S Scott 43-8; 5. B Devine 43-0; 6. J Hall 42-12.

Woodseats AC

Little John Lakes, Maid Marion Lake

Result: 1. Mark Holmes 224-10 (winner fished shallow with casters at Peg 15); 2. D Tomkinson 131-6; 3. S Francis 123-11.

Woodseats AC

Tyram Hall Fisheries, Match lake

Result: 1. Mark Holmes 165-8 (Winner fished pellets shallow before switching to the margins fishing maggot over groundbait at Peg 17); 2. J Depledge 156-5, 3. D Caton 133-5.

White Lion AC

Messingham Grange, Heron And Kingfisher Lakes

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Result: 1. Mark Holmes 101-4 (Winner made it a hat trick of wins fishing casters shallow and down the edge with maggots at Peg 28); 2. D Tomkinson 86-8; 3. P Donnelly 78-6.

Is Caviar Back On The Trent’s Menu?

The European sea sturgeon is thought to be a lost British species. Once it was so prolific King Stephen, the successor to Henry I fed an army of 20,000 horsemen and 60,000 foot soldiers with sturgeon from the Thames during a period of great civil strife, implying the Thames held sturgeon a-plenty. It’s not recorded how many individual fish were required to feed 80,000 troops but it would have needed to have been a very substantial quantity to feed a whole army.

In the early 12th century a dish of sturgeon could be readily obtained in the city of London but there was no prospect of a portion of chips to go with it. The potato didn’t arrive in Britain until well over 400 years later.

Unless anyone knows otherwise, the sturgeon is deemed to be a ‘royal fish’ as the de Prerogativa Regis, which dates from 1324 in the reign of Edward II, ruled that sturgeons along with dolphins, whales and porpoises, when caught, should be offered to the monarch.

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To further reinforce this, in 1430, Henry V ordered pickled sturgeon at his wedding to Katherine.

Though most people are familiar with the name sturgeon, there are actually 27 varieties of sturgeon in the world and the European sturgeon should not to be confused with the beluga sturgeon, a fish predominantly found in the Caspian Sea, who’s eggs currently fetch around £8,000 per kg when sold as caviar.

All the larger English rivers such as the Severn, Thames, Trent and Don were visited by the European sturgeon and it is understood that Doncaster museum has a record of 90 sturgeon from the area and for years had a stuffed specimen on display that was skewered with a pitch fork at Long Sandall.

Alas the sturgeon is probably no more here in the UK. The only confirmed spawning population in Europe is in the Garonne catchment in France, but this has also steeply declined.

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It’s a shame because sturgeon were once widespread from Norway southwards to the Bay of Biscay. They are a migratory species, spawning in rivers while spending a large part of their lives at sea but the construction of man-made weirs and locks over the past 3 centuries has prevented migration to the spawning grounds.

So how come, in the past week alone, three sturgeon were captured from the River Trent at Fiskerton? And it’s not the first time this has happened. Several were caught last year and the biggest reported specimen so far topped 30lbs.

Alas it is unlikely that this is the first sign of a resurgence of the European sturgeon. More likely these are sterlets or diamond backed sturgeon, sold through the ornamental aquatics trade to people with fish tanks and garden ponds who, when the fish have outgrown their surroundings, decide it would be a sympathetic solution to release them into a local river or pond.

Trust me, it’s not. Not only is this act illegal, imported fish frequently carry parasites and diseases our native fish have no immunity against. By sparing the life of one ‘pet’ fish you could be endangering the lives of thousands of others.

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This also applies to goldfish and other carp species which are particularly prone to disease.

Can Barnsley Win Again?

Canal anglers are advised to choose their destination carefully tomorrow as large sections of the New Junction and Aire and Calder canals are being used to host the Division One National Team Championships.

The areas affected cover 500 pegs in total between Oswald Church at Long Sandall to Sykehouse Roar Bridge on the New Junction Canal plus Rawcliffe Bridge to Great Heck on the Aire and Calder. Barnsley and District are reigning champions and will invariably start as favourites on a water they are intimately familiar with but expect them to be pushed hard by some of the finest match anglers in the whole country.

The same canals were in fantastic form last weekend for the individual National Championships. Ten kilos was required to make the top five. More than a third of the field of 120 anglers topped 5 kilos, while 97 anglers topped 2 kilos.

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Overall Gary Thompson led the way from Peg 100 on the New Junction with 15.130kg of bream. Top weight on the Aire and Calder was 10.240Kg, taken by Doncaster’s own former World Champion, Tom Pickering.

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