Shock turns to joy with a £1,000 winner

Proof that you should always go to your draw no matter how bad it may seem was served by Chris Senter in the Bank Holiday Maver Classic Final as the Worcester man turned an on paper shocker of a peg into a winner to win £1,000 first prize.

Fished by 72 qualifiers across two days at the Maver Larford Lakes complex, Shakespeare Bait-Tech man Chris scored section wins on both days to emerge as the only angler to record a perfect score. Runner-up Neil McKinnon and third-placed Max Galaszewski finished on three points each with weight needed to separate them.

Chris went into the match unsure as to how the cold weather would affect Larford, but was pleased to draw on the Match Lake for the opening day, as this would allow him to work out how the neighbouring Specimen Lake had performed.

“I had a good idea of how to approach the Match Lake and drawing peg 18 in the middle of the grass bank was handy,” he said. “I kicked off on the Method feeder with mini white boilies just past the long pole line, pinging 8mm pellets over the top. This caught an odd decent carp while feeding pellet and corn short at 6m for the final 90 minutes. It produced a good run of carp, although I also had three late on in the edge on corn.”

Those three margin fish were to be crucial as he pipped Simon Fry to the section by a little over 1lb as Chris weighed in 62-6-0. Day two dawned with peg 28 almost at the end of the burr bank on the Specimen Lake and Chris thought his chances were over. “It’s not normally that good at this end, but I saw a few fish topping” he continued. “I began on the Method but didn’t have a bite so changed to the pellet waggler fished 3ft deep with 8mm banded pellet. It was slow going in the wind but it changed direction, blowing over my shoulder, which was ideal.”

Plugging away with the waggler, Chris netted 10 big carp to weigh in 94-4-0 and win the section with over 20lb to spare.

Overall result: 1 C Senter, Shakespeare Bait-Tech, 2pts; 2 N McKinnon, Preston Innovations, 3 (191-11-0); 3 M Galaszewski, Maver, 3 (171-2-0); 4 S Harris, Little Dawley, 3 (154-2-0); 5 M Marshall, Barnsley Bait Co, 4.

Day one result: 1 M Marshall, Barnsley Bait Co, 133-12-0; 2 M Galaszewski, Maver, 112-4-0; 3 A Kinder, Maver/Marukyu, 107-12-0; 4 R Lamb, Maver, 104-14-0; 5 R Clement, Barnsley Bait Co, 100-9-0; 6 M McKinnon, Preston Innovation, 94-4-0.

Day two result: 1 S Harris, Little Dawley, 96-4-0; 2 R Lawson, Matrix Total Angling, 95-15-0; 3 N McKinnon, Preston Innovations, 95-13-0; 4 C Senter, Shakespeare Bait-Tech, 94-4-0; 5 M Jones, Tredegar Tackle, 94-1-0; 6 J Jones, Larford, 92-15-0.