I
n the last issue, I reported on the first
three Chapter Cup events and expressed the
hope that some decent pike would be caught
in the final two events, held in November.
Those events were held on the Stainforth
& Keadby Canal and, by kind permission of
Mark Green of Selby PAC, on Fairburn Ings.
Only four of us fished Thorne and we
welcomed Joe (Veal) to his first Chapter
fish-in; we hoped that he would find us some
fish as it is one of his local waters. We soon
discovered that there were three matches on,
two in the town area and a much bigger one
just to the east. These limited where we were
able to fish. It proved to be a hard day, all fish
caught came in the morning. Andy got off to
a good start with two perch, and two pike to
7lbs, one on his own-brand jig-fly, the rest of
us were blanking, missing small perch bites
or having follows from pike that would not
take. A move saw me strike it lucky with a
13 pounder that took a 19cm soft 4play.
Chris arrived and netted it (thanks, mate),
at which point he spotted a much bigger
fish that had followed it in. It was not to be
caught and all we managed after that were
a few small perch between us. Andy won
the day and Joe had just one small perch –
so much for local knowledge!
Fairburn Ings saw a good turn-out withnine members fishing; John, Mark (Kell) and
Mark (Brighouse Barramundi) joined regulars
Mike, Andy, Chris, Glen, Ian and Joe on a wet
morning, but with high hopes. The pike
fishing was frankly awful. I had some takes
early on that did not stick, others had
follows but no takes. Two were caught, by
Chris (6lb 4oz) and John (4lb), while Glen
dibbled out four small perch. After many
had given up, Joe and I chose to explore
down by the river, we found a channel
behind a sluice that was stuffed with small
perch (mainly 1oz to 3oz) that were giving a
take every put-in. Joe caught 55 for 6lb 3oz,
which by the rules meant he won the day by
a country mile! I caught plenty, but not
enough to improve my score.
In the whole competition, the best pike
caught was 13lbs (the only double), perch justover 1lb with several more of exactly 1lb and
only one chub (2lb); we know there are much
better fish of all those species in the waters
we fished, but they did not show for us. The
table below gives the results for the top five
in the Chapter Cup competition; the top four
places were very close indeed!
Glen is our Chapter Cup winner for 2014
and Joe is runner-up. Congratulations to you
both, you will fish the Chapters Final in- The Chapter Organiser’s Award goes
to Ian Marsland for his fine Ouse pike -
congratulations Ian.
A very big thank you to all who took part,
it made for some fun days even when the
fish were playing hard to get. I will look at
ways to improve the 2015 competition and
am open to suggestions.
Mike Stephen
POINTS SCORED
NAME EVENT 1 EVENT 2 EVENT 3 EVENT 4 EVENT 5 BEST 2 TOTAL- GLEN 190 100 335 DNF 40 525
- JOE DNF DNF DNF 10 495 505
- MIKE 260 0 236 238 235 498
- CHRIS 150 0 330 30 100 480
- ANDY 116 0 DNF 296 0 412
YORKSHIRE CHAPTER CUP RESULTS
Only scores in yellow count. DNF = did not fish. A total of 15 members fished at least one event.Yorkshire
Chapter Update
Mike’s
13 lberAndy’s 7 lb
pike on his
own jig fly