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ANGLING: Contest has the Lake's fish fleeing

13/ 5/2006

IT CAN be a hard life watching water sometimes, ask the lads who have competed in the annual Rochdale Observer Team Angling contest - as in some years that is all they have managed to do.

Apart from one year, when the contest was switched to Pilsworth, the event has been held at Hollingworth Lake, and there are those who swear the fish all move into the middle and out of range when the signs go up announcing the imminence of the Ob match.

The Lake could have fished well for weeks, but come the morning of the contest the inhabitants would have fled to leave anglers gnashing their teeth and swearing they would never fish the Lake again. Of course, they did, the next time the Ob match came round.

Rochdale Police were the first winners of the Observer Trophy in 1973 when 26 teams of four were involved, and the Police also provided the first individual winner in Maurice Holt.

The following year saw 88 anglers on the banksides, but only 35 of them put fish to the scales, the rest blanked.

The organising committee in the early days was Ted Flynn, Bernard Mills, Derek Gent, Ted Crompton, Harry Boulton, Observer sports editor Stan Townsend and the Observer's angling correspondent GK - Keith Aspinall who instigated the contest.

The job of those hardy souls was to visit the lake and mark out the pegs the night before a match, and generally ensure fair play for all. They did, of course, have several long committee meetings down the years, although the actual business end was usually done and dusted in 15 minutes and the rest of the time was spent on tittle-tattle and the latest tall tales.

The year of 1998 saw the introduction of the Bernard Mills Memorial Trophy which would go to the team with the highest aggregate weight on the day - and that was not always the team trophy winners.

A year later the contest lost Keith Aspinall, and as a mark of respect the 1999 event was named The Keith Aspinall Memorial contest. Keith's widow Marjorie made the presentations.

Entries are now nowhere near what they were in the early days, but the contest has survived thanks to "newcomers" on the organising committee such as John Hooper, Ian Ridgeway, Dave Cookson and Steve Mills, son of the late Bernard, who has won the trophy with five different teams.