NEW member Barry Peers was well impressed with his catch of skimmers and tench from Rixton Claypits on his first visit to Warrington Anglers’ Association fisheries.

Barry pole-fished double red maggot over small balls of groundbait at 11 metres to catch steadily throughout his session.

His light match-gear approach paid dividends when other anglers were just catching the occasional fish but the tench really stretched his elastic to its absolute limits.

The large lake at Sandiway produced two of our Fish of the Month entries, one a tench of 7lbs 10ozs 0drms caught by John Spencer and a bream of 13-8-0 caught by Dawn Preston.

The bream won the day and comes with an interesting tale, not only did it beat husband Mark’s personal best by 3lbs but the bait came from Aldi, priced at £2.99 a bag!

The honey-flavoured boilies were scoffed at before the session by carp purist Mark who said: “They’ll never work on Sandiway.” But they soon became the must-have bait.

Somewhat gutted and with deathly silent buzzers, he swallowed his pride and decided to ‘borrow’ a boilie, resulting in a tench of 6lbs before the ‘loan’ of another saw a similar-sized tinca come to the net.

Dawn won a prize of £100 of assorted bait sponsored by Bait-Tech, plus a Korda carp care kit.

Several reports from members of fish sighted with fungus at Moore Quarry were immediately passed on to the Environment Agency.

The matter is being monitored daily and, as fish welfare is of paramount importance, the fishery is closed until the situation improves, as a purely precautionary measure.

The recent stocking of our Wigan fisheries has certainly injected extra zest into the resident stocks as catches have improved dramatically at Fosters Pools and Woodshaw Reservoir. There are no reports as yet from Johnsons Pool.

Phoenix Park Lake is starting to produce a few tench and carp, with local rod Darren Rananouski catching a common weighing in at 19-8-0 using Mainline pulse dumbbells.

Carp and tench are starting to feed again at Grey Mist Mere with a few decent fish coming out over this past weekend.

Let me have your catch reports on 01928 716238, fax 01928 713898 or e-mail frank@warrington-anglers.org.uk HQ Parker Street will be open as usual tomorrow, Friday, between 7pm and 9.30pm for subscriptions and new memberships.

Frank Lythgoe Results: First Association contest: 1, Jim Byrne 3-14-0; 2, Graham Stokes 3-12-0; 3, Graham Belton 2-4-6; 4=, Harry Morris 2-3-0; Ross Whiteman 2-3-0.

Disabled and Over 60s: 1, Dennis Bates 2-14-12; 2, Barry Owen 2-8-6; 3, Bill Stockton 2-3-12; 4, Trev Bainbridge 1-11-0.

Forthcoming events: Monday: Disabled and Over 60s, draw 10.30am at Stockton Heath British Legion (contact John Dagnall on 635486).