Annual High Peak fishing match raises money for excellent cause

This event marked 14 years since Paul’s untimely death and the 13th memorial match witnessed the best fishing by far.

This year’s match took place in early August on pond four at Hope Construction’s fishing complex.

The weather was fine while the fishing was red hot!

With a couple of new faces in attendance and several of the regulars missing it was tense at the “all in” shout as anglers took their first cast.

It was literally seconds before the first float bobbed and young Tom Hayes was into the first fish of the day.

Local quarry worker Ian Waterhouse had an ‘explosive’ day on the peg next to the boathouse and was soon ‘drilling’ into some really good carp.

Rookie Tom Price on the next peg was matching him fish for fish while veterans Kelvin Yeomans and Simon Hackney were also remaining in contention.

Another youngster Owen Bradley was having a good match, but last year’s winner Phil Johnson and the Ruddick brothers were slightly off the pace.

Ian Marsh and Kevin Johnson bagged some nice fish late on in the match, but by this time the top four were out of sight.

At a tense weigh, it was debutants Waterhouse and Price who had taken first and second.

Ian’s floating bait tactic had won the match with just under 72lb while runner-up Tom finished with a handsome 56lb bag.

The old stalwarts of Hackney and Yeomans managed third and fourth with 45lb and 46lb respectively.

With the contributions from this year’s match the total now raised in memory of Paul is just over £18,000.

This money goes to Paul’s charity which is for the colon cancer research unit at Christies, Manchester.

Paul’s family would once again like to congratulate Ian for the win, and thank all those that took part in the match.