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Canal ace seals individual and team victory. Richard Pulford has won the first round of the Thorne Teams Of Three League, with a 17-15-0 net of quality roach and skimmers. Drawn on peg 208, Rich enjoyed an early run of perch on bloodworm and small roach on bread, before turning his attention to a long pole swim, fed with casters. A procession of chunky roach, and skimmers came to his net – as well as a bonus 3lb bream for a total weight of 17-15-0.

Craig Butterfield reflects on a recent feature with a difference. What is a match angler? I’m sure like me the idea you have of a match angler is someone sat on a fancy box with all the trimmings, holding an expensive pole and dressed head to toe in fancy coloured Gore-Tex clothing. On Saturday I was lucky enough to be on the bank with Dean Winsbury shooting some angling videos, now I’m sure all of you are thinking, “Who the hell is Dean Winsbury”? Well he’s a match angler, and a good one at that! He’s a master at bagging on prolific commercials and boasts match catches from venues such as Barston of over 800lb! You may be wondering how a match angler can have such huge catches and never grace the pages of Match Fishing magazine, well he’s a carp angler, or is that a specimen angler, after all, 90% of us fish for carp every week and would never dream of labeling ourselves carp anglers! We’re match anglers!Spending time on the bank with Dean and talking to him about his own style of match fishing was fantastic, you could tell as soon as I mentioned his match fishing a spark was ignited, he began to talk about matches he’s won and the ones that agonizingly slipped through his fingers due to a bad decision on his part. As he reminisced over the near misses and the “if onlys” I realized I could have been talking to absolutely anyone in the pub after one out our “normal” matches.

Home team take first round victory. Eight teams of four lined the banks for this opening round of the 2013-14 Larford Lakes Winter League series. Thirty two anglers pegged equally across both Match and Specimen lakes went head-to-head in a bid to start their campaign strongly and break into an early lead. Conditions on the day were not ideal with a frost the previous day having cleared the water coupled with a low and very bright winter sun.

Walsall rod scoops £1,000 festival victory. Ian Winter sounded a warning to the rest of the competitors in next weekend's RiverFest 2013 final by taking top spot in this years three day festival with a brilliant 4 point total. The DH Angling grouped angler was delighted with the victory which scooped him over £1,000 in cash plus tackle prizes donated by festival sponsor Shakespeare. "I've had a great three days," a delighted Ian said after the presentation.