15/16th October SODERHAMN Bagging .............and the weights were staggering !!

Massive thanks to Jonas Gustafson , Tommy Hjartstrom , Peter Eriksson and Anders Eriksson for the magnificent effort of organising this prestige event . This on the back of the recent successful SM event organised by the Constellation FK and the previous Spring event organised by Mattias Larsson. What a tremendous venue that brings enrichment to the town with so many stopping there and bringing in good money to the towns finances.

Harbour Peg 18 

Arrival on the Friday 

The weekend started well at McGees opposite the Stads Hotel where we were staying . A few drinks and laughs and listening to music with a Music quiz . Great togetherness and many laughs .

The nutcase .......

 

My Peg 18 and set up ready (Makes a change ! )

To my right is Anders Eriksson - good friend and Captain in Bulgaria, Plovdiv , 2003 .......omg ......almost 20 years ago !!! 

Choice of floats was the EXNER Lucifer 2/3gr on the whip and the EXNER Eliasz 2/4gr on the pole rigs with a lighter 1.5gr SENSAS Luis .

MY REPORT :

Peg 18 looked a decent peg and i approached it like most with a a few whips and a TAP at 11-13m . I started by placing 6 balls of leam/gb , 75/25 laced with joker , a few dead maggots , casters . 3 balls went in at 5-6m whip line of gb/leam 50/50 with dead reds and casters . 

After the preliminary feed the match started and Anders to my right catching directly, then i started to take a few and really started well in first 90 minutes taking Ide , two small bream and skimmers/Bjorkna with large Roach , great start and i thought i was at least top 2 in section however the middle hour slowed the bites down and the pegs to my right started to produce much better and this was frustrating . It got to the final 2 hours of the match and i caught nothing !! .......even when i put in joker/leam it had no effect . It was to my dismay that the bridge out in the water to my right was a wind blocker and i could see a shoal of Bleak , totally black with them and any bait  tried to put in , it was attacked . Even when i put on two large worms anchored to the bottom they just came back with Bleak Blow-Jobs ! I made a mistake of not setting up feeder rod as Hakan to my left caught steady on the feeder all day and was not pestered by the Bleak .......... You live and learn !

Well , here are the results an they are quite staggering reading for these 5 hour competitions as yet again this tremendous venue has set new records (for 5 hours )

Day 1

Section A - 

1 - Jesper Dyberg 27860

2 - Esa Harala 22300

3 - Bjorn Wideberg 18940

Section B

1 - Niklas Strengelstund 26560 

2 - Mattias Larsson 23560

3 - Finn-Erik Lerdalen 18240

(4 - Jamie Cooley 18300 )

Section C

1 - Bengt Forsling 18280

2 - Anssi Lehteva 14020

3 - Tommy Strengelsrud 9760

Section D

1 - Fredrick Samuelsson 48780

2 - Thomas Soderlund 47320

3 - Andrzej Szubarczyk 38520

DAY 2 

Section A 

1 - Finn-Erik Lerdalen 26620

2 - Andrzej Szubarczyk 20860

3 - Esa Harala 20360

Section B 

1 - Tom Ostlund 36920

2 - Fredrick Samuelsson 28960

3 - Marcus Claesson 23480

Section C 

1 - Jesper Dyberg 82960 !!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 - Thomas Soderlund 74700 !!!!!!!!

3 - Niklas Strengelrud 52820 !!!!!!!

4 - Jonas Gustafsson 48780 !!!!

5 - Tommy Strengelrud 48360 !!!

6 - Peter Eriksson 48160 !!

Wow , wow , and wow !!!!

Section D 

1 - Marcus Enstrom  82240 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 - Per Nilsson 31600 

3 - Thomas Larsson 16880

Fredrick Samuelsson won the Saturday match and the overall winner went to Thomas Soderlund who is the Master on this water with many wins to his credit . His total weight over both days was 122020 , incredible fishing.

Unfortunately Russel Hopkins was taken ill on the Saturday night in the Chinese restaurant and we all became concerned and quick thinking by Marcus Claesson was for him to call for an ambulance as quite clearly Russ was not looking the best as his face was very Greyish / white so he was comfortably layed down with Dan Käck . He was taken to Hudiksvall Hospital for further tests after the two Lady Paramedics had performed diagnostics on him for some 30 minutes . 

Russ returned home the next day after a good nights sleep and it looks like he had dehydrated and exhausted himself  due to working silly hours - The rest of the Metmask team will monitor him and make sure he attains a better lifestyle .