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Police Service UK National 2009 Norfolk Constabulary in association with the excellent Barford Lakes complex near Norwich hosted the 49th PSUK National. With over 30 teams taking part and a match for the reserve team Anglers also taking place, virtually all the pegs on the main Barford complex and affiliated lakes where required to house the 210 strong field making this the largest single event ever hosted at Barford fishery. Unfortunately, earlier in the year the fishery had an outbreak of KHV, which potentially could have totally written off the event. However, the Fishery controlled the outbreak and with a lot of hard work by Sarah and her superb team, they managed to insure the event went ahead as planned. With all lakes virtually full to capacity, sport was hard on all the lakes in the first 2 hours, with all but a select few finding the going very tough, making every fish critical in the hunt for those valuable section points. By the third hour of the match, the lakes producing the better sport were Match and Pleasure lakes with bites on most pegs and bonus fish starting to put in an appearance the match was starting to take shape. On peg 25 on Match Lake Paul Bird [Essex] had started to produce a solid run of Match Lake fish on the straight lead, right on his tail was Steven Carr [Lancashire] from Peg13, who had found good sport on the Pellet Waggler. On the Pleasure Lake there seemed to be a 2 horse race for B section with Trevor Popham [Hampshire] on peg 5 fishing the Feeder and Steve Newbury [West Midlands] on the Pole and Waggler going fish for fish.
The last hour saw Paul Bird and Trevor Popham make the overall individual crown a definite 2-man battle. With about 45 minutes to go Paul Bird lost a fish and broke a hooklength, he put his feeder rod down and grabbed his margin pole, as this happened, Trevor Popham landed a very big Mirror, they were now separated by only ounces. With 30 minutes left and after wasting 15 minutes on the margin pole Paul finally repaired his damaged Hooklength and went back on the tip, which was the right decision as he took 2 fish in the last 25 minutes to take over all individual crown. Top Team prize on the day went to Avon & Somerset, with 35 points, which included a section win for Robert Gibbs, with Dave Stockton and Tony Butler both finishing second in their sections, this helped the West Country base team finished 13 points clear of their nearest rivals. Second placed Met A put in a solid all round performance to amass a total of 48 points and secure the runners up spot, with the teams best performance coming from Tim Byers who took 43lb 15oz for individual third place. The third team spot went to the Met D team who managed to put in a great team effort and scratch 62 points from what can only be described as a hard draw.
Police Service Team Champions 2009 - Avon & Somerset |
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The word from Willow & Railway Lakes was of very patchy sport for most and no one having any huge weights. Then I received info from Colton Lake that only pockets of sport where to be found, with 3 anglers catching well and Tim Byers {Met A] was just nicking it, making the last hour of the match critical in deciding who would be PSUK Team Champs for 2009, as there were still no clear leaders in the Team event with an hour of the match to go.
