| Spring Festival Results 2010 |
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The festival limit of 42 anglers attended the Ian Heaps Spring Festival this past week at Holgan Farm. Die hard festival competitors from years gone by know to bring plenty of wet weather gear with them but for once it wasn't needed and sunglasses and sun cream were the order of the day. This was the last festival using the present format of 3 festival matches alternating with 3 open matches as the decision has been made to revert to the old system from October of 6 festival matches with the option of dropping your worst result. This has the advantage of keeping your hopes alive even if you bomb out on the first day, in simple terms the best 5 results from 6 will count towards your points total. As usual Chris Barley set off as Festival favourite based on his previous form but there were a few new faces this year so time would tell who would occupy the winner's podium this year.
Chris showed that he had lost none of his skill in the Open Match on Sunday by winning the Carp Lake with a catch of 103lb 2oz, while festival regular Bill Bryant won the Match lake with a massive 126lb 12oz,, Ian Heaps took top honours on the Tench Lake with 55lb 3oz. Ian seemed determined to win his own festival for the first time by winning the first festival match on the Tench lake with a catch of 33lb 2oz from peg 25, Mick Walker weighed in 58lb 5oz on the Match Lake to give him top honours, the Carp Lake was won by newcomer Andrew Quarmby with the second ton to be weighed in in 2 days with a weight of 102lb 12oz On to Wednesday and Andrew Quarmby's travelling companion, Keith Bradley won the Tench Lake with a weight of 39lb 4oz from peg 3. Ian Heaps failed to capitalise on his joint leading position by finishing in 12th position on the Match Lake while Alan McGuire sitting on his usual flyer took first place with a weight of 67lb 13oz from peg 20. Pats on the back were the order on the Carp Lake as local boy Keith Moore (alias dark Horse) romped home with 53lb 2oz from peg 27 to give him his first festival section win.
All too soon Friday arrived
with the festival all to play for. 3 points separated the top 5 places
with newcomer Keith Bradley on 3 points closely followed by Andrew
Quarmby
and Craig Thompson on 4, Chris Barley was waiting to pounce on 6 as
was mild mannered Mark Venton sneaking in under the radar. With the
exception of Mark who was pegged on the Tench Lake, the rest were all
pegged on the Match Lake so the draw was going to be all important. Leader Keith Bradley struggled to catch off peg 23 and could only sit watching Chris Barley's elastic continually at full stretch on peg 27 catching carp at 5 metres. With a 65lb limit in each net Chris seemed to be up and down like a bride's nighty collecting nets and soon had 4 in front of him and was running out of bank sticks. Amazingly two hours from the end of the match Chris stopped catching and only caught a crucian from that point on. Meanwhile Andrew Quarmby was also having a red letter day on peg 17 and continued to catch up until the final whistle. Did he catch enough to give Chris a run for his money? Andrew was first to weigh in and brought 138lb 14oz to the scales. That weight would normally be enough to win any match but today was different as Chris weighed in an amazing 184lb 4oz to win the lake and relegate Andrew to second place. Over on the Tench lake Mark Venton was oblivious to what was happening on the Match Lake and could only concentrate on winning his lake and hope that Chris and Andrew had a bad day, Mark achieved his game plan and won his lake with a weight of 40lb 0oz.With Chris,Andrew and Mark all on 7 points it would now be on overall festival weight to decide the winner.
After deliberation back at
the caravan, the result was Chris had caught 289-0,Andrew, 264-14,and
Mark 131-15 declaring Chris Barley the Festival winner.
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