The few brave anglers who attended the Holt Sea Angling Club Annual Open match had already struggled along treacherous icy roads just to get there, and faced with blizzard condition from the start, it was always going to be difficult for them to concentrate on the fishing.

One early casualty of the match was Tony "Genesis" Chidwick who had been pegged on a bad snag and decided to take a journalistic role rather than risk losing any more gear.

The match started off to a flyer for both Tony "Last Cast" Thomas and Keith Morley, as they both bagged a codling each from pegs 17 and 18.

This started a private battle between these two match regulars producing a very nip and tuck battle that was set to last to the wire.

Two pegs away John Lacey already had his head down and was steadily plugging away with a more consistent catch rate pulling in doubles and trebles of Dab and Whiting.

This soon caught Tony and Keith’s attention as they saw their lead getting eaten away. And so it also became obvious to the rest of the field that the fish seemed to be concentrated between pegs 15 to 19.

Quite a day!

This would prove to be the case as eventually these pegs would yield the top five places in the match.

Richard Ives and Dene Conway both drew the two end pegs which normally would have been favourable, but with the lack of tide neither could work their position to their advantage.

The blizzards abated after mid day and the sight of wandering anglers told the tale that the fish had gone off the feed somewhat, – everywhere apart from in front of John Lacey who continued to haul them in.