THE fourth round of the 4-a-side Neptune Series held at Hengistbury Head provided some cracking sport with Boscombe & Southbourne A comprising of Reg Clough, Alan Jones, Martin Seear and Tony Ward being catapulted up the league after a fine performance.

Clough from East Woodyates, who has had a lean spell of late, beached an 8lb 1oz smoothhound.

Clough, who caught his hound on ragworm tipped off the peeler crab, was backed up by Jones who recorded over 7lb of wrasse to the catch along with Ward and Seear who both added some valuable pounds to their total on the night of 19lb 3.25oz.

Despite the poor weather conditions, a good variety of species were recorded by the 40-plus anglers with smoothhound, mackerel, sole, pout, ballan wrasse, corkwing wrasse and silver eels returned to the scales.

The best specimen was a 1lb 7.50oz sole apprehended by Phil Bowering representing Christchurch & District.

Pro Tackle A were the runners-up on the night with 14lb 11.75oz mainly thanks to Malcolm Stote from Lymington, who had bagged a brace of smoothhound together weighing over 11lb.

In third position were Wessex Kestrels with 13lb 12.50oz followed by Wessex Falcons 13-0, Pro Tackle B 10-0.75, Christchurch & District 8lb 9.50oz, Castaway A 8lb 5.75oz, Advance Angling A 7lb 12.50oz, Wessex Hawks 2lb 8oz and Bournemouth & District 1lb 13.50oz.

Hamble A, comprising of Rob Shattock, Colin Searles, Ray Ashby and Tony Spridgeon, romped through to the finals of the CIU four-a-side knockout competition where they will meet their B team for the third consecutive year after seeing off Highcliffe A during the semi-finals held off the Nab Tower.

The Highcliffe outfit certainly had the Hamble squad rattled at the start of the semi-finals has they quickly landed three good smoothhound.

But the Hamble lads switched to the more prolific smaller species to finish with 46lb 4oz while Highcliffe could only muster 30lb at the end of the day.

Hamble A finished with two smoothhound, two rays, five dogfish, 11 black bream and 29 scad, while the Highcliffe team landed four smoothhound, one ray, two black bream and three scad.

An evening session along the deep water section at Lepe has produced a very tasty specimen sole weighing 2lb 3.50oz for Colin Mitchell from Lymington.

The 37-year old fitter used ragworm presented on a size 2 Aberdeen to tempt the specimen along with a number of small black bream and a small bass all at close range.