There was a match fishery I used to visit on a regular basis for the angling papers, the owners used to be always eager for publicity for the fishery and weights were good and the fishery thrived.
However, news reached me recently that a ‘few’ regulars were always framing or winning matches and remarkably those same regulars were amazingly drawing the favoured pegs every week to such an extent that travelling match anglers had begun to avoid the place.
The venue’s open matches now only attract about eight competitors every week, on match days the place used to be alive with banter and friendly rivalry now it’s a shadow of its former self, the opens on Wednesdays and Saturdays still have the same names winning them but the pools money and prestige for winning are now lower than a sturgeon’s arse.
If you are a match venue owner be careful about pandering to a few ‘regulars’ as they will ruin your fishery and bring it down to their level, they’ll get together and demand you change rules to suit them or ban methods and baits that don’t, they’ll have you running your fishery in every way that gives them an advantage and when the bread and butter of all fisheries the ‘pools fodder’ match anglers stop coming, so will they.
