Congleton Charity Match 20th March 2010 - 08/03/2010

Anglers from as far a field as Leicester, Birmingham and Preston competed in the Rotary Club of Congleton Dane and Congleton A.S. Charity Match on the Macclesfield Canal last year when nearly £1000 was raised for a mixture of charities.

The 109 anglers that fished the match were expecting a warm and sunny day but the weather forecasters appeared to have got the forecast drastically wrong as far as Congleton was concerned, as overcast conditions and a biting wind reminded everyone that Spring hadn't quite fully arrived. Despite anglers travelling many miles to fish the match, it was local angler Dave 'Dabba' Booth who edged a narrow win from a peg in the middle of Booth's Wides. Using both pole and waggler tactics with maggot or caster hookbaits Booth landed a dozen skimmers together with some roach to weigh in 8lb 3oz. Despite being told with less than an hour of the match to go that he stood a good chance of winning the event, Booth thought that he'd struggle to win his ten peg section as other anglers had caught well around him. The win was well deserved for Booth who probably puts more hours into fishing the canal than any other local angler.

The Henshall Hall section of the canal provided the second and third placed anglers with Frank Holding (Ted Carter Preston) weighing in 8lb of caster and punched bread caught fish, including a tench of nearly three pounds, to narrowly beat Fred Cheetham (Team Eclipse) who caught 7lb 13oz 14dr of roach on punched bread. Dave McCall (Shakespeare Superteam) a former winner of the match, claimed fourth place from a peg backing onto the golf course at Snail Bridge with a 6lb 8oz 15dr roach catch taken on punched bread. Teenager Michael Chung (Warrington AA) drew the first peg in Booth's Wides and caught skimmers and roach for 6lb 6oz 15dr to take fifth place. Stuart Bird (Ted Carter Preston) must have thought that he was in with good chance of a win when he drew the area that produced last year's top three weights. In 2009 the fish didn't seem to be there in the same numbers and he took sixth place with 5lb 7oz 12dr.

Section winning weights were on a par if not slighly better overall than in 2008 when 114 anglers competed.