A good day at the office, eventually – Magpie, Pidley

Magpie Lake, Pidley, peg 32 

There were 13 of us in this club match – which should have been a warning to me. Things started to go wrong even before the draw.

The last time we fished here our secretary/chairman, John, fished us all on the same bank from about pegs 1 to 18, ignoring the pegs allocated to us on the island. Assuming he would do the same, I put together my trolley, dumped my stuff on it, and trundled off to the bank (around peg 6), taking three journeys (rods, bait, nets etc went separately.)

 

My swim after the match (when my camera had a little charge).
You can see the bank piling running along the front.

Not a good start

I really fancied pegs 1 to 5, which have great margins, and some sort of feature, lillies or reeds, on the long pole line. So imagine my feelings when I drew 32 on the island (John had decided to fish basically alternate pegs), which is a fair walk from where I had put my gear. I decided the other entrance would be a lot closer, walked everything back to the car, unpacked the trolly, loaded it all in, drove round, unpacked everything, re-loaded the trolly and made three journeys the shorter walk to my peg. My fault – nothing wrong with the pegging.  I should have checked, of course.

THEN I realised I had lost one of my Octbox attachments – I’d put it on the roof of the car before leaving home when I needed to put something inside the bait tray. I’d forgotten, and that’s now  lost forever. Then I realised I had also left my specially-prepared cat meat behind – washed and cut to size. Not a good start.

ALSO I didn’t particularly  fancy the swim. Pegs 32 and 33 are the only ones of the lake which don’t have natural margin cover – the margins have been piled to stop bank erosion. But there was always the option of fishing shallow, which has seen at least two weights over 500 lb in recent days, and I’d got some casters for that.

UNFORTUNATELY the light wind was in my face, and there was no feature like lillies to fish close to, though I did start the match by flicking casters out to about five metres.

A good start

Then things got better. Three early carp at full depth at  five metres on pellet weighed about 6 lb between them, and I was pleased I managed to get them in quickly by keeping the pole low so the fish came to the surface where I managed to net then first time!

 I had found a small dip – just two or three inches – in the lake bed next to the piling to my left, which I fed with tiny cubes of luncheon meat. A switch to this, to see whether there were fish there early found that there were – and this became my main swim for the first half of the match. Carp to 3 lb came quite quickly on luncheon meat, and after three hours I had about 80 lb.

I also tried shallow, and in fact did catch two or three  carp on caster, and then banded hard pellet, but Ken Wade from Peterborough was on the opposite bank, fishing casters shallow, and by now had started to catch fish quickly. There was no way I could keep in touch with him fishing shallow, so I decided to concentrate close in.

Dead maggots to the right, with five on the hook, brought fish to almost 5 lb, and I alternated from left to right with the occasional look at five metres with pellet to rest the margins. I had several short pauses in the margins when the fish gave just liners or played with the bait. Afterwards I guessed that the absence of reeds meant that when there was disturbance from hooking a fish instead of backing into  weed, the fish had nowhere to hide, so backed off down into the deeper water or farther along the piling.

Several times I flicked the rig out another couple of yards along the side, and this almost invariably hooked another fish – all were from 2 lb to 4 lb. But next drop-in, nothing! That was when I swapped swims. I continued like that until about 90 minutes from the end of the match, when I put in a fourth net and concentrated on cat meat. By now the wind got up and came from the left, which made it more difficult to fish the left-hand swim. But I had a good last half-hour.

Playing  fish – my weakness

I did have trouble landing the fish after the first three – I have found that while it’s fairly easy when fishing long - and particularly when fishing shallow - to bring the fish in slowly and carefully, and net them quickly, margin–hooked fish aren’t so obliging. I know it’s the biggest weakness I have. The plus side was that I lost only about four fish all day, caused mainly by my trying to bully them. But I wish I could land all my fish more quickly, because it costs me weight in almost every match I fish.

Dennis - lost his rod first cast!

The weigh-in

At the end of the match I  found my phone had died, so I have no early picture of the weigh-in, but I carry a portable solar charger in the car and was able to get a little life into the phone eventually. You don’t have to click the weights here, and I estimated about 40 lb in each of my four nets.

As I had expected, the first three weighs, on pegs 1, 3 and 5  were all good – all over 200 lb, way ahead of what I had hoped they might be. So I was well out of the running already! Apart from Ken Wade, who seemed to have been playing fish non-stop after the first hour, I hadn’t seen anyone really catching, so those weights were a bit of a revelation (you can’t see those swims easily from my peg).  I now hoped my 160 lb estimate was going to be reasonable – at least not last.

In fact that last net weighed in at 60 lb, and I managed to toatal 203 lb 7 oz, well over what I had estimated, which amazingly beat Ken by 1 lb and took me into third spot.

 

SOME GREAT RESULTS, AND SOME DOWNERS

First the bad news (for some). Dennis Sambridge, to my right on 34, lost his feeder rod first cast... cast out, turned round, whoooosh! He put out his spare rod, and promptly managed to lose his first three fish when his shop-bought  hooklengths all broke.

Tony, peg 28, with a good-un.

With an hour to go John Smith on 3 (the winner), had his top three pulled out of his hand (Stupid Boy!) and it sailed across the lake almost within reach of Mike, then turned back and ended lying in lillies in John’s swim, but out of reach.

THEN, forgetting he had three spare Number Threes with him, he mogged off back to his car and took out a spare pole to continue the match.

BUT Ken Wade saw what had happened and took his feeder rod up to John’s swim to try to retrieve the top three. He spent ten minutes , but was unsuccessful. Tony managed to retrieve the tops using his long pole after the match had finished.

Mike with his best match catch, 146 lb 8 oz.

The result - a good club match.

UNFORTUNATELY Ken’s generous action lost him third spot – in that ten minutes he would undoubtedly have caught enough fish to have overtaken me – he ended just 1 lb 1 oz behind me! I owe him a drink.

THE GOOD NEWS was that John’s winning weight of 232 lb 10 oz was his best match weight.  Bob Allan caught his best-ever match weight of 196 lb 13 oz; and Mike Rawson, on peg 30, who has made a fantastic leap forward since having a coaching session with Mark Pollard, caught his first ‘ton’ last week,and  bettered that in this match with his best-ever weight of 146 lb 8 oz.

So all-round a lot of happy anglers. Even me.