I had been looking forward to this match for a while and
Tony was the same as we both had done a few hours at work to let us get away
for this one. Tony was at mine for the
customary lift at nearly dark o’clock and we were in the road with time to
spare, but this was no ordinary journey and I managed to narrowly miss a car
that was overtaking me VERY quickly. In the quote for the Glimmerman, there was
nothing but road, then a glimmer, then a chuffing omega went tanking past as I
was hitting a bottleneck in traffic.
So that was me in a good mood for a start, that was then
compounded by a chunk of wood in the carriageway that I had to hit, mood
improved …….not.
We arrived in one piece for breakfast at McDonalds and
the talk was of how well the place had been fishing with numerous tons from
Cary at the weekend, so that was where I wanted to draw. We moved on for the
draw, paid in chatted around all the other and folks I had not seen for a while
and before I knew it the draw was upon us.
Kev gave the brief and then team captains were called in one by one, I
was doing the draw due to my recent drawing form, and we were about 4th
in the queue. Our team for the day was Tony, Rocky and myself and the pegs were
110, 100 and 128 respectively, due to a split section over the back to back
pegs between Cary and Campbell, team wise it was a very good draw, individually
I was not impressed as I didn’t feel it was a good peg at the moment. My mood
improved…..not.
I got my kit to my peg and I apologise now to everyone
who thought that I had spat the dummy because I was in a foul mood for some
reason, anyway, I looked at the peg and the tree to the left was now
overhanging substantially so much so that to fish the areas of the peg that
used to produce on the wag you would lose a few floats in the tree, so that
line was binned. My mood was stinking now, all the carp in front of me were
getting ready to spawn, and I would be stuck on the pole of casting the
wag/bomb towards the right hand side of my peg.
I had a small word with myself when I got the chance and decided on a
line up the spit, an up and down line in open water and a 5m line.
I plumbed up the spit line first and found that in front
of a clear bit of bank at 13m the depth was quite constant and the bottom was reasonably
hard so a 0.2g MB WAC ‘O’ was set up on 0.20-0.18mm and a size 3 T175, elastic
was green reflex as I was hoping for a few from here.
I spent quite a while trying to find what I was looking
for on the long and short line and fortunately it was the same depth in both
spots I decided on so one rig would do it, again I was feeling for a harder
bottom than the surrounding areas and found two nice patches so a 4X10 MW Carp
Slim was set up on 0.18-0.14 and a T175 size 2, this time the elastic was a
lighter blue reflex as I was also hoping for backup skimmers on this line.
My last two rigs were a shallow rig for the long line and
a dobbing rig, but I couldn’t buy a bite on either so I won’t go into detail.
My bait tray was a simple affair with 8mm meat, 10mm meat, hemp and 8mm pellet,
in hindsight I think that I would have been better off with 6mm meat but that
is to try another day, I think that in future I will cut my meat after I have
drawn that way I won’t have to take tons of frozen meat to the lakes that then sits
in the cool bag.
I managed a quite a bit before the all in, I annoyed Tony
for 10 minutes, ate a hot pasty and helped the guy on 132 set up a bomb rig so
that it was fishery safe. Anyway, all in was called and out went my dobbing rig
to try and mug an early one. 10 minutes later my mugging rig was up the bank
and I fed the spit line and the long line both with half a pot of hemp and
meat, then going straight out onto the long line where I instantly hooked and
lost a carp, this was followed by a lull in which I should have twigged but I
started to try shallow with meat on the long line and also kinderpotting meat
on the same line with the same result, chuff all. So I pot in a quarter pot of
meat and went on the spit, instantly hooking and landing my first carp, this
was followed by roach bites.
I refed the spit and went long again hooking a fish that
I lost, this time I re fed and went straight on it for a fish, I still didn’t
twig though and set up a pellet wag to chase the fish I could see cruising,
most of the guys around me had had fish on the bomb (that I didn’t get out the
bag), but I was going to make the wag work… after an hour it was chucked up the
bank and I had a look short for a quick fish, but at 8lb it was well worthwhile.
Now I could go on about how I ended up having to put half a pot of bait in for
every fish from the spit and long, and that it took me until about 2 hrs to go
to figure this out, or that I fed 6 tins of 8mm meat and got plagued by small
roach whittling my hookbaits down to nothing within minutes unless a carp was
in the swim. I tried 8mm hard pellet to
overcome the small fish but all this did was let me watch a float dip constantly
with nothing on the end for longer before re baiting.
All day I got to watch Tony getting beaten up by the carp
under the brambles that he was fishing to, John Dewberry had a steady last few
hours taking good fish short on meat with the breeze in his face and Mick
Craddock on 74 had picked up another net after 2 hours so had a few. As the all-out
was called I had about 10 carp for what I thought would be 50 odd pound, as the
scales came round (with Adam Waklin helping out) it had obviously been a
struggle everywhere, this still didn’t make me feel better though, even when my
fish went 62lb odd, the guy on the other side of the spit had 69 and Eddy on
119 (The other side of the lake with a nice breeze and corner, excuse over) had
managed 88lb for a section win. So I was third in section, Rocky was about the
same and Tony took a quid of me with 78lb for 4th in the match and 2nd
in his section behind John, who went on to win it with 126lb ish. Second
overall was Mick on 74 with 108lb.
The team was second on the day so all we need to do now
is get all three of us on the bank for another couple of matches to see if we
can qualify for the finals.
On a final note get better soon Gary as I missed your dulcet
tones for the last couple of hours.
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