A disaaaster!

Yew Lake, Decoy, peg 1

This was the second Telford match, the day after the first (as it would be!) And while I have posted that Decoy has no duff pegs where a match cannot be won, the carpark ends of the strips have not been the best this Spring. I suspect it’s because if a Southerly wind is blowing down the fish will follow it (ie away from the car park) and if it’s Northerly or Easterly, and blowing towards the car park, it’s nearly always terribly cold so the other end , protected by a bank, is much more sheltered and slightly warmer, so the fish at that end are more inclined to feed.

Anyway I drew peg 1 at the car park end which actually looks quite good, with a few reeds and weed against the end bank, to my right. The only bit of bare bank is on the end bank, at about only eight metres, but when I plumbed up it was barely more than ten inches deep, dropping off to four feet, so that was effectively not an option. However the match started well – I put some bait – dead red, corn and a little hemp - in among the reeds and in front of me at about three metres, and seconds after dropping in here with a bunch of maggots a 4 lb barbel took the bait. Things looked good!

Unfortunately that was it. For the next three hours I fished there, and in two spots to my right next to the reeds, in depths of three feet and four feet and apart from a couple of liners and a foulhooked fish which broke me, there was nothing. There was not a ripple on the surface as the wind was mainly behind me, which didn’t help in the sun. Halfway through the match I had just the one barbel. The angler to my left had a few early fish in the margins but then spent most of the rest of the match nicking odd carp at about 13 metres. Eventually I decided I would have to do the same, aiming for a flattish piece of bottom about four feet from the end bank.

I had to break the pole down twice because of the swim behind me, but eventually I nicked another barbel at 13 metres. The bites were so tiny, though! I had to dot the float down to a dimple and very gently ease the bait slowly along, and then the float would dip. The best time was when the wind moved round from almost Northerly to almost Easterly, which gave me ripple for about ten minutes, during which time I had two fish. I also moved my rollers round so I could roll the whole pole back at an awkward angle – to my right towards the car park. Unorthodox, but it worked after a fashion. Then the swim died again, and I struggled at 13 metres the rest of the match, using mainly dead reds on the hook, and ended with about nine fish for 39 lb.

The angler opposite had about the same, I would think, and he didn’t weigh in, and neither did the angler on his right. However the angler to my left weighed 128 lb, but that was not enough to frame – local Danny won the lake with 228 lb from peg 20 and Sean on peg 15 had 191 lb. There were 100 lb weights from almost every peg.

Strangely I was not worried after the match – I felt I had fished to the best of my ability and was confident that had I been given an average swim I could have got 100 lb. From halfway through the match I wasn’t fishing against the other anglers – I was fishing against the fish. And I was extremely pleased that I managed to nick just those few barbel and carp. It wasn’t easy – I had to fish a black-tipped float if I was four feet from the bank, but change to a rig with a yellow tipped float on a different rig about eight inches shallower if I was any closer because of the reflection. In addition I again found I had to put in bait before every fish – and with a 13-metre pole (that’s Browning metres, not some of the other manufacturer’s metres which are considerably shorter) it was hard work.

So a disaster result-wise, but it gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to winkle out fish in difficult circumstances – just like the old Winter Leagues. And I doubt if one of the other anglers would have willingly swapped swims with me...even though they all made comforting noises when I showed them my peg. But that’s matchfishing!