You know those rare days when, after visiting Specsavers, the England football team are able to clearly see the opposition goal and decide to kick the ball towards it, rather than back to their own goalkeeper? And when the midfielders manage to lure the opposition defenders out of position before thumping the ball across to Michael Owen who slots it into the net? And we beat Germany 5-1, and wonder why it can't always be like that?
Well, matchfishing is like England playing football - match after match things don't slot into place, the fish don't co-operate, the weather turns nasty, and you keep making mistakes. Until one day almost everything goes right...and you wonder why it can't always be like that!
That was my match on Sunday - one of the most enjoyable matches I've fished for years. It was a humble eight-entry Fenland Rods Handicap on the odd-numbered pegs from 1 to 15 in the big bay on Willows. Pegs 1 and 15 are the form pegs here, but as always I was happy just to be out on the bank. The weather was overcast, with very little wind, but with spots of rain early on, and more forecast later.
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| Peg 11 - the water flat as a pancake, and like soup. The angler in the distance is John Smith on 15, under the tree. |
Nobody else that I could see seemed to be catching, so I carried on, and got some tiny bites - the sort that tremble the float rather than take it under. Then a 1 lb F1 obliged, and a couple more roach, and some missed bites which resulted in the expander being taken, then a 2 lb F1. At that point I swapped over to a grain of corn.
That was much better, because it allowed me to let the bites develop, without the corn being nicked too often. If I laid the rig out in a line occasionally a roach took on the drop, and once an F1 took it. On the whole it was better to drop the bait in vertically - something Alan Scotthorne demonstrated to me many years ago, pointing out that it was much more natural than allowing the bait to drop in a curve.
Soon after I started catching I fed in a biggish pot of hemp, 6mm pellet and corn, and the roach seemed to home in on it. So after that I fed just six to eight grains of corn on a small pole pot with every single cast, and that seemed to suit the F1s better.
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| Dick, to my right, struggled to 25 lb on Peg 13. |
Getting the right depth on the rig was critical - half an inch was golden, so the bait just touched bottom. Most fish came as I slowly allowed the rig to tighten up against the bait, though scum and debris on the surface made it difficult to see the bites as I had no more than a pimple showing. I would leave it for a minute then lift the rig an inch, then repeat, allowing the bait to move very slightly.. The fish seemed to take a long time to take the bait properly, and I found a smaller grain better than a large one.
At the start the best place was a foot or two past where I was feeding, but towards the end it was better to put the bait right in among the loose feed.
Eventually I started hooking the grain through the hard end and pushing the hook right though so only the point was showing - Bob Nudd's preferred method - and this worked best of all, as I never lost the corn if I missed a bite.
For the next three or four four hours I carried on like this - every ten minutes I would bring in an F1, biggest 3 lb, and I expected some commons or mirrors to muscle in, but they never did. It was steady but unspectacular, and the anglers either side of me didn't seem to be catching much, so I carried on.
During that steady spell I lost just one fish. I did have a quick look into my right margin, where I had been regularly feeding corn, and got a sign of a fish. I didn't waste too much time there, so went out, and came in again a little later, when a roach took my corn bait, so I abandoned that swim for the moment, though I did put in corn and hemp, and a few cubes of cat meat, into the left margin, about four feet from the bank. The most spectacular incident, which startled Dick on the next peg - and me - was a 3 lb bream which thought it was a trout, leaping out about two feet when hooked and crashing back like a sack of potatoes.
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| John Smith on 15 found the tree so close he couldn't easily fish the waggler he wanted to use. He ended with 32 lb 9 oz...after a 10 lb carp had hurtled from his keepnet. |
With about 40 lb in the net, which seemed to me to be pretty good compared with the others, and 75 minutes left, I started on my second net and had a look in the left margin. First drop with cat meat and a 2 lb F1 was hooked literally within seconds. I spent the rest of the match there, with the second fish a lovely 5 lb golden mirror, and a little later a 3 lb barbel.
Several more 3 lb F1s came in, plus a mirror or two, and towards the end I hit a powerful fish which came out in front of me and made a beeline for my keepnets. I couldn't get an extra section on fast enough and it snagged me. That cost me the match! A quick look in the side to my right, against the grass, saw a 2 lb F1, and I then lost a big fish, obviously foulhooked, which snapped my hooklength and it is probably still making circuits of the lake. But on a carp water foulhooked fish are almost inevitable in warm weather, so I counted my self lucky to hook only one.
I saw Alan Golightly on Peg 7 catch fish on the pole and towards the end saw Peter on peg 3 land a fish or two, but I had no idea how they had fared overall, though everyone I could see seemed to catch more in that last hour.
Seconds before the match ended I hooked the best fish of the day, an 8 lb mirror, which I landed five minutes later. I very much like the Preston 17 yellow hollow elastic I had on both rigs. It is a good substitute for the white Middy 20-22 which I loved so much, but which has been discontinued. It was much softer than it sounds.
So ended a match which I thoroughly enjoyed. No terrible mistakes on my part and it went smoothly from start to finish. Why can't it always be like that? Frankly I didn't care where I came in the match, I felt that happy.
Time lost playing that last fish, and my usual long time packing away - five rigs to dismantle, plus the back to take off my chair etc etc (plus slowing up in old age) meant that the scales came to me before I had packed up. Peter Spriggs on Peg 3 had also had a good last hour and had weighed 92 lb 4 oz, which I didn't think I had a chance of beating. but I was much closer than I thought - the last net went 44 lb and the first 46 lb. Adding on the extra ounces brought be agonisingly close to Peter with 91 lb 3 oz.
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| The result on the day. But this was a handicap event, based on last season's final club championship result. This resulted in Callum Judge winning the gold medal. |
This match has gold, silver and bronze medals awarded, on the handicap weights, and it was close! Callum, fourth on the day, emerged the winner with 104.9 lb; I was second on 100.3lb, and Peter, fishing on scratch, third with his 92.25 lb. And Peter won his umpteenth Golden Peg this season, but as he had won the last one there was only £8 in the kitty!
No - no motor bikes involved - just a 10 lb carp. With an hour to go and his landing net laid over his keepnet top John Smith spotted a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and was just in time to see a 10 lb carp, which had been in his keepnet, go for gold in the high jump and splash into the lake, having dislodged his landing net.
It's not the first time this has happened at Decoy - I have heard of several instances in the past few years. John's nets were about 18 inches above the surface. I have seen anglers put a small floating mat on the surface in the net, which still enables them to easily put fish in. Bad luck, John.
Next match on Friday on Six_Islands, followed by Elm on Sunday, both at Decoy. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, the club has had to cancel a match because of insufficient entries. The latest was due to be fished at Frazers Fishery near Ely later this month. With some fisheries having to insist on a minimum payment, clubs like ours, with a falling membership, are likely to fold. We have been lucky that Decoy Fishery have been so helpful to small local clubs like ours. What does the future hold?
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