Peg 18
A nice surprise before we started
Fifteen of us fished this Spratts club match on the Tuesday, and before the start
Trevor announced that after the Saturday teams-of-four Ellis Buddle Memorial match the wrong winners were announced. Two
teams had tied on points and the weights totted up to find the winners. The
weights were added up correctly, but credited
to the wrong teams.
The result was that the team that I, Mick Raby, Peter Harrison and John
Buckenham were in had in fact WON by 6 lb and not lost by 6 lb! So Trevor gave me
the medal he had been presented with, and the £25 as my share of the winning team’s prize. A good start.
Then I drew peg 18
which, for a change, I was fairly happy with. I wanted a peg on the Eastern
bank – 14 to 26 - and would have strongly preferred 20 to 26, but Bob Allan had
had quite a good weight from 18 on Saturday so I thought I might have a chance of catching a decent weight.
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| John Smith with a 15-pounder. You can see how green the water was. |
The water, like Northview on Sunday, was green with algae,
but hot a bad as Northview had been. When we started nothing seemed to have
been caught in the first few minutes, so I was pleased to get a 3 lb carp on a
6 mm pellet on a top two, dragging it slowly along the bottom. This has seemed
better recently than lifting the bait, and it proved to be the same in this
match.
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| Peter The Paste - 60 lb 15 oz from peg 11 on the Western bank, which didn't fish as well as the bank opposite. |
I soon went out to the swim I had baited six sections out,
and using a pellet or corn I manged, in the next hour, to hook three fish and
lose them all, almost certainly foulhooked. I knew the fish were there because
they were fizzing – dispelling air through their gills. They seem to do this
when they are cruising around just filter feeding through their gills, and when
they become excited.
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| Bob Barret was in peg 13, in the corner. I've done well in this swim, but it didn't fish well on the previous Saturday. |
So back inside, and another two fish were hooked and lost, but
two good fish approaching 10 lb were landed, so that at 1 o’clock I had just
three fish. John, to my right on 16, had also had a big fish or two.
Maggots for barbel
I put in a load of dead red maggots to my right margin and
had a barbel there, but decided to switch back to the left, in the deep water
about five feet from the bank. Then fish started to come in waves – at one time
I had a 12-pounder and next drop-in had a bite straight away, and landed this
in seconds after it came to the top and obligingly floated into my net as I
laid my pole level with the surface and let the elastic contract slowly.
Two unusual incidents
1) Of course fish didn’t
always come quickly, so I decided to put in bait with a bait dropper in the
six-section swim, intending to go back there during one of the quiet spells. But the bait dropper came off. About an hour later, when I
visited the swim again (without catching any fish) I hooked the bait dropper
and got it back!
2) The platform was quite
a way above the water, so when I landed a double-figure fish I had to get off
my box, kneel down on the platform, and reach down to grab the net, as trying
to lift the net horizontally with the fish in it would probably have broken the
handle.
Once, when I grabbed
the net to haul it up, the fish jumped suddenly and I dropped the net. The net
fell back into the water and the handle cartwheeled over my head into the lake.
Luckily it floated and I was able to jump off my box, grab my hook from the
holdall, and hook the net back.
The rig was still in
the water and to my amazement when I lifted the pole the fish was still on, and
I was able to net it!
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| Peter Harrison, winner with 141 lb 6 oz from peg 14 in the North-Eastern corner. |
I now had to put bait in before every fish – if I didn’t I
didn’t get a bite. Casters and hemp seemed to be the best combination, and this
brought about seven more carp from the left deep margin. Each of the big ones presented
me with problems – some did not go into the net easily, then I had to kneel
down to grab the net to land them; then they jumped about in the net and made
unhooking difficult. Twice the hook was torn from the line and I had to re-whip
it.
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| John Garner with a barbel which we weighed at 6 lb 8 oz. |
Then I found a spot
just a few inches from where I had been fishing in the right margin which was a
few inches deeper. First drop in there I found a barbel of about 5 lb. Then
another smaller one, and with 40 minutes to go I went for a third net. Trevor,
on peg 23, already had three. The trip to get the
net took almost 15 minutes as I had to go to the toilet, so
I resumed fishing with 25 minutes to go. As I did so Trevor came back with his
fourth net.
It took me ten minutes to get a 2 lb barbel, but then an 8
lb mirror came to cat meat, and then a ten-pounder. Thirty seconds before the
end I hooked another big fish, but unaccountably, about three minutes later,
the hook came unwhipped. It was a Kamasan Animal eyed hook, and I’d had several
fish on it. The end had a piggy-wig's tail, so the line hadn't broken, it had somehow come undone. Yet I always leave a tag when I tie a hook...
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| John Chilton with a double-figure beauty. |
The weigh-in
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| Mick Raby, last to weigh, threatened to overtake my weight, but finished with 106 lb 11 oz for fourth. |
I didn’t get to see Ted (91) weigh in from peg 1, but he had
a fish of 16 lb-plus. The weights on that West bank weren’t great – Terry Tribe
was best, from peg 6 with 85 lb. But my bank was much better. On 14, in the
corner, Peter Harrison, fishing top-two plus two with cat meat, took fish
steadily all day for a winning 141 lb 6 oz.
A great performance, with the fish taken from in front of him rather
than towards the corner.
John Smith had 87 lb 7 oz, including a fish over 15
lb, and I weighed 116 lb 14 oz – the last net went 22 lb 4 oz in the last 25
minutes. I was 1 lb over in one net.
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| Trevor Cousins, second on 137 lb 10 oz. |
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| Mick Linnell (far left) watches as his 68 lb 1 oz is weighed. |
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| The result (see also left). |
The weights (1 to 13 on the Western bank, 14 back to 26, opposite bank).
Peg 1 Ted Lloyd 31 lb 9 oz
Peg 3 Wendy Bedford 35 lb
Peg 4 Peter Barnes DNW
Peg 6 Terry Tribe 85 lb
Peg 9 Bob Allen 41 lb 12 oz
Peg 11 Peter Spriggs 60 lb 15 oz
Peg 13 Bob Barrett 39 lb 14 oz
Peg 14 Peter Harrison 141 lb 6 oz
Peg 16 John Smith 87 lb 7 oz
Peg 18 Mac Campbell 116 lb 14 oz
Peg 20 Peter Chilton 79 lb 8 oz
Peg 22 John Garner 31 lb
Peg 23 Trevor Cousins 137 lb 10 oz
Peg 25 Mick Linnell 68 lb 1 oz
Peg 26 Mick Raby 106 lb 11 oz
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