Well what a difference a week makes and I was well
prepared for the actual match day with feeder hooklengths, pole rigs and even a
waggler rod in the bag ready to go, the Friday night saw the team meet up and
get the bait and final bit sorted. A
quiet nioght this time but I still struggled to get to sleep, partially due to
snoring and partially due to the nerves I get on a national as I have only ever
had 1 good day on them and I have now fished 6 Div 1’s and a Div 2, still tomorrow
was a new day!!
We were all at the draw in good time and parked reasonably
well for a quick getaway, Gaz did the honours and passed me D5, I had no idea
where this would put me but I knew that I was down from Rea bridge so in the
vicinity of the cess pool of a peg that I
had been sat on last week. I was
just hoping that I was closer to the bridge as there had been a few fish along
there in the Individual national. I got
out of the car park easily, got to the car park without a hitch, met Gaz in the
car park as he was in C section high numbers and then it started to dawn on me
that I could be in the same area but I quickly ignored it and loaded up my
barrow and started off to my peg.
I crossed the bridge and found the first peg I was
staring at was C24, This meant that I had around thirty or so pegs until mine….
“Nah I can’t draw there twice” I thought.
As I got closer to the area that I was desperate to avoid
the numbers got closer and then before I knew it I was wanting to turn around
and go home. Last week I was on 209,
this week 208, the peg that Ritchie had struggled from.
After a little cry as I knew I was in for another
national to forget I had to do something about the trees behind the peg as
Ritch had struggled with the trees behind him, so 5 minutes and a bit of
swearing soon saw me with enough room to be able to cast the tip or wag without
worrying about the hooklength.
The rest of my pre match time was standard, clip up tip,
mix groundbait, plumb short line, plumb long line, plumb worm line, set up wag
and whip and finally prep bait and eat.
At the all-in I threw 6 balls of groundbait with no feed
all over the canal with a crowd cheering me on (Grant and Ian), Sean Ashby
(England International) showed me how it should be done on the next peg and we
both seemed to start the match fairly similarly with feeding the various lines
and then watching motionless quiver tips.
I managed a ruffe on the tip after about 20 minutes, then
a couple of roach on bread on the short pole by the end of the first hour, next
hour saw me try everything but the whip for 2 more roach on bread but then that
died so I chucked the tip under the tree opposite, one 8oz skimmer and a missed
bite on that and then the pain started as every time I looked up someone in the
section would be playing a bream.
Knowing I needed a bonus I re fed my worm line at 10m in
the middle of a few weed beds, put more feed in on my long pole and tried the
tip again for nothing. I went on the
worm line and had a good 20-30 minutes with 3 eels and a perch for about a
kilo, then it died, so I went out onto my long pole with half an hour left to
go, By this time Seam on my left had 3 big skimmers/bream and the guy on my
right had a 4lb+ bream as well that he snared on his short line. The wind had picked up a bit and in the space
of 5 minutes I bumped off two skimmers that I was certain were foulhooked as I
picked up on them as the pole was moving the float. That was the end of the
long pole and the end of my match as I had no more bites.
I ended up with 1.550kg for 13 out of 44 points, three pegs to my left won the section with
13kg, three pegs to my right had second in section 10Kg, most people around me
had a bonus of some description and I missed out on points by the narrowest of
margins.
Back at the results it turned out that Scott had 8th
overall and a section win with 25Kg and that Martin had 3rd in
section with 14Kg. The team survived in
31st place.
What would I have done differently?
I should have fished groundbait rather than bread short
and possibly started on the bread feeder.
As for that if I had sat it out for a bonus I may not
have caught the roach, but 1 bream would have made a huge difference.
Barston on Wednesday, let’s see if I can’t get this out
of my system by abusing some carbon!
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