7th July, 8th July and 9th July 2015
Amazing, crazy, mind blowing, awesome, unreal, no not Matt Godfrey’s latest shirt but just some of the words used to descried the fishing during the 2015 Middy sponsored festival at Westwood Lakes.
The 3 day festival was run over three lakes at the popular Lincolnshire complex, Falcon, Skylark and Osprey with the anglers all fishing a different lake on each day and the winner decided on section points.
With big cash prizes on offer as well as over £1000 of Middy tackle all of the anglers were keen to get off to a good start and with the festival being decided on weight in the event of a tie on points all of the anglers were hoping to get a good weight on the board to catapult them into a strong position. This was exactly what happened for MAP backed Matt Pillay as he won the Match off Falcon with a brilliant 195lb just ahead of young stars Jimmy Brooks with 180lb and Adam Swain, also on Falcon, with 179lb.
Day 2 is often the important day on these 3-day festivals as it can leave you either well in the race or destined for the minor places and those with a good result from day 1 were hoping for a good draw and a chance of another favorable result.
With a section second on day 1 Jimmy Brooks managed to go one better to win his section and the Match from Skylark with 124lb thanks to some late fish in the margins but the man of the moment was once again Matt Pillay as a second section win for him left him on a perfect 2pt score going into the final day, on top of a good weight thanks to his day one match win.
The draw was all important on the second day as it looked to be a two horse race between Matt on 2pts and Jimmy on 3pts, Jimmy was hoping to draw in the same section as Matt giving him the chance to take points off him but the draw bag didn’t agree putting them both on Osprey but in different sections.
On paper Jimmy had the better peg but with Matt already 1 point in front Jimmy would be relying on other anglers to take points off Matt as well as him having to do his own job and win the section.
Unfortunately for Matt he was drawn next to Adam Swain who certainly knows how to catch fish from this venue and unable to keep fish coming Matt felt the match and the festival slip away from him and could only sit and watch the youngster pull away during the last couple of hours. Jimmy was on fire on peg 12 and despite a “slow” first hour in which he caught just 40 fish he went on to bag 547 small f1’s in just 5 hours!
As time was called the writing seemed to already be on the wall but Matt’s weight of 223lb was only good enough for 3rd in the section while Jimmy had put a quite unbelievable 308lb 2oz on the scales for a new lake and venue record.
The section and match win was enough to push Jimmy into 1st place in the festival on 4pts while Matt was left languishing on 5pts someway ahead of Brendan Strowlger on 7pts.
Results:
Day 1:
1st Matt Pillay 195lb
2nd Jimmy Brooks 180lb 2oz
3rd Adam Swain 179lb 10oz
Day 2:
1st Jimmy Brooks 124lb
2nd A Denny 118lb 14oz
3rd Matt Pillay 113lb 4oz
Day 3:
1st Jimmy Brooks 308lb 2oz
2nd (Joint) Adam Swain & Paul May 256lb
3rd Brendan Strowlger 253lb
Overall
1st Jimmy Brooks (Middy) 4pts (612lb 4oz)
2nd Matt Pillay (MAP) 5pts (532lb)
3rd Brendan Strowlger (Maver) 7pts (503lb 14oz)
4th Paul May 7pts (489lb 4oz)
5th Adam Swain 8pts (487lb 14oz)