"Last Sunday I competed in the second round of the Kent Angling League, on the River Rother in Sussex between Iden Lock to Newbridge and I make it no secret that the Rother is my favourite river with plenty of team points and section wins knocked up over the past few seasons.

Banter by the water

Last Sunday I had a feature appear in MatchFishing magazine which clearly indicated how I approach my matches on the river; plus on my http://www.youtube.com/user/RussEvans1 angling channel I also have some film footage showing again how I fish the river with rigs, baits an approach openly discussed in front of the camera. The river as I found out earlier in the month is gin clear and fishing very hard so I knew it was going to take a good effort to put a few pounds on the scales and when I drew the first peg F9 at Newbridge I knew I had a good chance of winning the match. A few of the opposing lads had seen the article and passed comment -banter style- but I knew they were trying to put me under pressure with their mind games as I was in a good peg. I am too long in the tooth to fall their games and being confident on a venue makes all the difference and I casually smiled at all of their remarks. With 54 anglers taking part it was worth winning and I set up all my tackle and prepared my bait with even more confidence as I was very keen to back up my feature with a good performance.

Another win

With the water clear I did not ball in at the start as I normally do but cupped out four big balls of my black groundbait mix with loads of chopped worm. I fed my eel line but felt it was not the right conditions, never the less I had to feed it as I might need to give the line a go. A few minutes into the match I was catching some small beak but then my first small skimmer came some 15 minutes in and I knew that was a good sign. During the match I could see a few whips going up and down so I knew some of my section rivals were after the bleak, but as I caught more and more skimmers, bigger as the match went on I knew providing no one had found some big slabs I was going to go close. Confident that I was going to win the section anyway from any peg I got my head down and worked my socks off for the win and by the time the scales had come to my peg just 7lbs 4oz was winning the section. I knew I had reached my target weight for the Rother which is double figures and when the scales stopped on 11lbs 15oz, it was another section win under the belt.

Word had spread around that the river had fished hard as I knew it would and my weight was the only double figure weight recorded with 7lbs 4oz the nearest. A cracking win for my team and a very enjoyable and satisfying round win for me.

Tight lines,

Russ Evans."