My favourite record of all-time was (and still is) The Everly Brothers singing 'All I Have To Do Is Bream'. It came out in 1958, just before I left school, when bream fishing was all the rage on the Fen drains. I sometimes used to catch them. Later in life I used to catch even more. I was lucky enough to see the song sung really well in Peterborough last week in the show Rave On - a tribute to proper music from the 50s and 60s with the emphasis on Rock 'N Roll, and of course The Master himself, Buddy Holly.
But it wasn't bream I was after on Sunday, fishing the JV club match - it was carp, of course. Then, bugga me, all I could catch was...bream! And not a lot! Certainly not enough.
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| Peg 20, devoid of Raspberry Ripple for most of the day! |
Now, to be honest I doubt if there was an angler in that match who wouldn't have put peg 20 very low down on their list of fave pegs. Nineteen and 20 are set well back in a big bay, and although you can win off any peg at Decoy, in Winter, when carp tend to hug the island and the main bowl, with some in the back of the spit,. those two, plus 26, 28, 29 and 30 are not swims I would run to (27 is not used). Still, I had a job to do - and this won't take long.
The wind was over our right shoulder, and I had no ripple until the last half-hour. Out on a feeder, short cast and long cast without a liner; on to 11.5 and 13 metres of pole using corn, and not a bite. So after about two hours I had a look in the left margin, where Rob Goodson had suggested, before the start, that I try, and suddenly I had a bite, which I missed. After missing three I left the next one for a good two seconds before lifting into a 2 lb bream.
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| Peter Harrison on 24 plays an early carp on the bomb, probably with bread. |
Two more bream came fairly quickly, before they vanished, so it was back on the long pole where the result was a 3 oz carp. In the lest two hours I managed another bream from the left margin, one from the right margin, and finally on on 2+2, 15 minutes from the end, in front of me. I also managed to foulhook a big fish in the margin which never made a strong run but which wallowed around like a sack of potatoes before coming off; probably hooked somewhere in the belly, I guess.
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| Peter struggles to lift his biggest fish, taken on the pole. I had plenty of time to take pictures! |
Meanwhile on my right Peter Harrison was picking up a fish approximately one every 40 minutes, on a bomb and corn, and the long pole. He finished with about eight, including the last one foulhooked, to my six bream, which went 16 lb 2 oz and left me bottom apart from two DNWs. To my left, on 18 Yammers was also catching bream, but included two big carp on the pole, the best one we weighed at 15 lb 4 oz.
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| Yammers (John Savage) included two good uns... |
Occasionally, on the pole, I got liners - slow dips of the float - which showed me that there were fish of some sort around. and definitely not roach.
I wonder whether the fish preferred just the pellets, or whether they just happened to prefer that place in the lake? My liners suggested that while carp were willing to come into my margins they didn't want to feed there.
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| ...including this 15 lb 4 oz beauty. |
John Molesworth won on 5 with fish on a feeder and then on pole in the margins, for 134 lb 11 oz. Next door on peg 4 Tony Evans fished mainly pole I think, long and then in the margins, for his second-placed 127 lb 7 oz. I think they both also used hard pellet. My next match is on Tuesday on Cedar with Spratts and, because one must learn lessons, I will definitely be looking at fishing hard pellet. A 4mm looks small to me, but I will start on that. Rain is forecast, so I will have an excuse for starting with my usual moan again.
THE RESULT
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