Midlands Air Ambulance Fundraiser, Woodside & Island Pools

Nineteen (19) anglers attended this year's annual Midland Air Ambulance fundraiser event with anglers pegged across both main match lakes. Event organiser, Gary Hickton of Worcester Angling Centre, was unable to run the event this year so the fishery stepped in to help make sure all of Gary's hard work over the last nine (9) years or so didn't go to waste this year in his absence. The event was, as a result however, ran a little different to normal with regards to the payout with overall winnings and section prizes being offered on each lake.

Conditions for this year's event were ideal with plenty of cloud cover making things in general feel much cooler than in previous weeks with the worst of the mini heatwave hopefully now behind us!

The standard of fishing on the day was very much dependent on which of the two lakes anglers found themselves on with the Island pool producing much better weights. Woodside pool fished much harder in comparison with the resident carp not showing until the second half of the match, but regardless of where anglers found themselves, weights were close with no individual angler(s) running away with it.

WOODSIDE

Winner on the day on a tough Woodside pool was Craig Lea-Hair. Craig drew permanent peg 9, which is the preferred area at the moment. With lots of carp showing up in the water, Craig opted to fish shallow for most of the match with maggot to end the day with 43-01-00.

Finishing close behind in second place was Mark Edwards, who drew permanent peg 21. Mark started his match fishing long over to the island with a method feeder, but wasn't able to put a run of fish together, so switched to his margins later on with maggot & pellet to find some good stamp fish to finish with 37-14-00.

Third place on the day was taken by Nigel Hart from permanent peg 11 - another area with recent form. Nigel caught most of his fish late on down his edge on maggot to offer 33-10-00 to the scales and record a section win.

POSITION	ANGLER	PEG	WEIGHT	METHOD
1st	C. Lea-Hair	9	43-01-00	Maggot shallow
2nd	M. Edwards	21	37-14-00	Pellet & maggot in the margins
3rd	N. Hart	11	33-10-00	Maggot in the margins

Craig Lea-Hair with part of his winning 43-10-00 taken from Woodside pool

ISLAND

Winner on the day on Island pool was Lawrence Connolly from permanent peg 14. With water levels being lower than normal due to the extremely hot weather of late, Loz was only about to find around 3' of water in front of him. Offering maggot shallow on the hook whilst feeding fishery micro pellet over the top on his short line Loz enjoyed a busy days fishing finding small carp in numbers as well as 14lb of silvers. Despite a couple of knock-backs on his carp nets (totalling a little over 5lb over both nets) Loz confirmed a final weight of 114-00-00 to win the lake and the event overall.

Enjoying an equally busy day was the ever-consistent Dan Hart. Dan, who has won the event before, didn't fancy his chances after the draw pulling out permanent peg 7 on the dam wall, but put in a mammoth performance fishing paste down his edges to weigh in a solid 100-01-00 from a notoriously difficult area.

Rounding off the top three finish on Island pool was another venue expert, Dave Bowyer. Like Dan, Dave pulled out an unfancied peg but with his confidence high coming off the back of an open match win the night before, Dave fished another tidy match offering maggot and pellet down his edge to to weigh in 72-04-00.

POSITION	ANGLER	PEG	WEIGHT	METHOD
1st	L. Connolly	14	114-00-00	Maggot shallow
2nd	D. Hart	7	100-01-00	Paste in the margins
3rd	D. Bowyer	9	72-04-00	Maggot & pellet in the margins

'Loz' with part of his match-winning catch taken from Island pool

All in all, it was another successful event, which saw everyone catch fish and, more impotantly, raise money for a very worthy cause. Despite the lack of a raffle this year, between the anglers fishing the event, and additional donations from pleasure anglers on the day and change from pellet sales not being taken from anglers, we raised a total of £206.

Well done again to Gary Hickton of Worecester Angling Centre for continuing to run the event at Woodside Fishery and a massive well done also to everyone that took part. You can all hold your heads high knowing that you have, almost certainly, helped save someone's life thanks to your donations.

The 2025 Midland Air Ambulance Champion, Lawrence 'Loz' Connolly, with the impressive winners trophy