LAST week I said that I had a KAL round approaching on the River Rother at Wittersham and that I had not been out of the top three in my section for the past few seasons.

Statements like that always puts a bit more pressure on yourself as you are boasting how good you are on a particular venue.

Well, I am glad to say that my record still stands as I put in a decent performance to win my section and finish runner-up on the day behind my team-mate Jim McDowell.

At the start of the day my gut feeling was telling me that, team-wise, a weight in the region of 4-6lbs was going to score great team points but, having framed my last four matches on the Rother, I was in a determined mood.

I started by introducing seven tangerine-sized balls of ground bait which consisted of a bag of super black, half of super cup and the same again in brown crumb to add that stiffness to the mix.

I am a firm believer that a dark mix works better than light mixes as it does not stand out to much alerting predators for a start plus I feel a ground bait which matches the bottom in colour is more natural to bigger fish and makes them feed for longer periods in the peg and more importantly, stay in the peg or nearby when they go on and off the feed during the day.

The first two hours were pretty slow and I guess I had 25 small skimmers and the odd bleak for less than a pound, but I did notice that the skimmers were starting to get slightly bigger. Exactly at midday after glancing at my watch my float dipped with confidence and I was netting a skimmer bream of a pound, things were looking up.

The next put out, after lifting my float and two red maggots up in the water before dropping slowly back onto the bottom, my float positively dipped under and as I lifted into the bite the float stayed put but three feet of elastic pulled out of the tip of my pole, I was into a big fish, a match winning fish I thought to myself.

As I pulled the fish away from the shoal, slowly shipping back my pole onto the roller behind me, my heart started to beat faster.

I could feel the fish shaking its head as I unshipped my top four and lifted up to net the fish, with my left hand holding my landing net into position I slowly lifted what I can only describe as a lump up to the surface.

Again it shook its head and just as the bulk shot on my line was appearing out of the water the big slab gave another thump before parting with my hook.

I must admit it did my head in for the following 10 minutes, as I knew that fish alone would win a section.

Plus I felt it would cost me the match as well.

However, I still had half the match to go and I was far from winning my section so I just had to get on with the job and get my fishing head on.

The following hour produced a string of good sized skimmers and when I hooked and landed a bream of nearly 2lb I knew I was on the way to winning my section.

The last hour slowed up a little and I really had to work for my fish lifting the bait up and down and side ways to tempt a bite or two, but still I managed to bump off two more good-sized fish and despite a section win and second overall which I am really pleased about, I packed up feeling I had not fished well.

Tight Lines.

Russ Evans is Advertiser Sport's angling columnist