WITH the cold weather continuing into a second week and with hardly any sign of a let-up, the Skipton Winter League competitors reluctantly decided to abandon the last two matches.

The Xmas Cheer fixture was called off just a week after the last league match had suffered the same fate.

It has been agreed that the league placings after the match on November 26 will decide the 2017 winners in all the various competitions.

Accordingly, the winners are as follows – Individuals: 1 Dave Fenn 27pts, 2 Bob Fenn 36 and 3 Rob Thornton 49.

Pairs: 1 Dave & Bob Fenn 14, 2 Bill Davenport & Keith Brown 22, 3 Russell Heaton & Jason Aldis 23.

Individual Knockout: 1 Brett Young, 2 Bill Davenport.

Pairs Knockout: 1 Bill Davenport & Keith Brown, 2 Simon Chenier & Graeme Waterfall.

Weather permitting, it is hoped to organise a few matches in the New Year for winter league competitors and their friends.

No venues have as yet been decided so watch this space for further particulars.

With the canal being mainly ice bound, most of the fishing available lately has been on the river Aire and even here, some high water levels have been experienced thanks to rain and melting snow.

Few anglers have been fishing the river but those that have wet a line have caught the occasional grayling up to around the 450g mark.

Brown trout are still more or less absent at the moment but should begin to increase in number now that spawning has been completed.

Plenty of anglers have shown an interest in fishing for pike on the Aire but the weather has been against them lately, especially during flood water conditions.

The best length for pike at the moment is from Carleton Stone Bridge downstream to the bottom limit or even lower for Bradford City AA. members.

This stretch contains a good variety of sizes from roughly 1.5 kg to over 7.5 kg.

The Skipton AA record fish came from just below the Snaygill railway bridge and weighed 10.2kg.

It was caught on a sprat in 2005 by Ryan Preston of Hellifield, beating a 9.81kg fish landed in 1988.