What’s Your View?

In the competition world of sea angling a contentious subject for a number of anglers is the option of fishing pegged or rover matches. A lot of matches are now pegged, a large number are also rovers. The purist match anglers often see rover matches as an easy opportunity for unscrupulous anglers to cheat. This is made even easier when the competition boundaries are over large distances, some of the big matches may cover 20-30 miles of shoreline!

There have been a number of high profile matches won by an angler who has been found bringing fish to the scales that have not been caught within the competition. The most prominent recently was the 2019 European Championships, where a cheating angler walked away with the 1st prize of £4000. Absolutely shocking behaviour cheating the other 1000+ competitors!

This is a risk when competing in weigh-in, rover matches that cover huge boundaries making supervision or self policing by other anglers impossible. The large prizes on offer are often too tempting for the tiny minority of fraudsters. This dishonesty is not as prevalent as in the past, but on rare occasions can plague the sport!

A lot of the top match anglers prefer the pegged, measure and release or pegged, measure and conversion matches. Some will only fish these formats and personally this is my preference and I rarely fish a rover match now. This eliminates the unsupervised roving element from the equation, all anglers pulling their peg number out of a bag or select a sealed envelope, within being their peg numbered match card. The pegs being spaced generally 10-20 metres apart over an area of designated beach. Competitors are easily viewed and policed from the adjacent anglers each side, minimising the chance of someone producing fish that have not been caught within the competition.

It is understood that not all venues are suitable for pegged matches and some clubs traditionally hold matches covering rough ground making pegging next to impossible. However some of the spring and summer matches fished over clean ground beaches and promenades make pegging a viable option in a lot of areas.

Another contentious subject is the option to fish a ‘catch, measure & release or the other option of catch, conversion & release match. The ‘measure’ matches where each fish at or above the minimum size designated, is measured and the angler with the longest accumulated length at the end of the competition is the winner. This method seems to be the preferred option by most anglers. Personally I prefer the conversion option where every fish at or above the minimum size is measured and converted to points from a table for that particular species. This method rewards the angler for catching a heavier (larger) fish, as an example a 35cm cod in a ‘measure’ match scores 35cm, but it weighs approx 14 ounces scoring 43 points in a ‘conversion’ match. Another angler then catches 2 x 18cm dabs that measure 36cm combined beating the 35cm cod, but they only have a combined weight of approx 4 ounces and would have only scored 10 points on the conversion chart! Thus an angler catching better quality fish can be beaten easily by an angler catching a few more smaller fish, as the scoring system goes by their length not their weight! The measure system is fine on a venue where you will be catching one species, such as flounder matches in estuaries or whiting matches. I think it becomes contentious when fishing with a mixture of species being caught. Another issue is some anglers don’t like being ‘blown out of the water’ when an angler who is catching very little then catches a large fish eclipsing the score of possibly all the anglers on the beach and winning the match. Skilful top match anglers can catch large numbers of fish and don’t like to be blown away by a so called ‘lucky fish’!

A good example of the possible final results difference between the two options on a venue with mixed species was a NorthWest Sea Angling League match I fished in May 2009 at Silloth. I caught 2 x bass, 7lbs 3ozs and 3lbs 6ozs respectively. Plus 5 flounders and 4 dabs for a combined length of 382cm. Conservatively taking the flounders weighed 1lbs each and the dabs 2ozs I probably had a bag weight of at least 16lbs. The match winner had a length of 460cm with a bag of 9 flounders and 6 dabs. Again using the same conservative 1lbs per flounder and 2ozs for the dabs he probably had a bag weight of about 9 & 3/4lbs. I didn’t finish in the top 3 places! It was a cracking match by the way, stacks of fish caught. See clipping below.

I understand the ‘conversion’ format takes longer to score the fish and a lot of anglers like the simplicity of the ‘measure’ format. So I would love to hear your comments on this subject please. Your thoughts and comments on pegged matches versus rovers would be interesting as well. Please use the ’Leave a Reply’ box for your comments below this article. Thanks!