Fate played me a trick at the draw for this Spratts club match. My name was first out of the bag, and before my peg was drawn Bob Allen asked: "What peg, Mac?" I replied, without thinking: "Sixteen".
Into the other bag dived Trevor (just his hand, not his whole body) and came up with: 16! Why did I tempt Fate like that? It's the longest walk, and the heat was already burning us up. Sixteen is a good peg (even I have won from it) but on a day like that I don't think it really gave any advantage.
When I got there the corner was completely filled with cut reeds, and actually I quite fancied it, because I had casters, and thought there might be carp under the floating reeds. There were carp all over the swim, drifting just under the surface, no naturally I tried mugging some (I had three shallow rigs ready). Not a chance, they either ignored the corn skin, pellet or caster, or had a look and turned slowly away.
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| It was HOT, with the corner completely filled with floating reeds, which I thought would be holding fish galore! |
Next I catapulted casters out to the edge of the floating reeds, fishing a banded caster shallow, and after a fair while I had a 2 lb F1. That was followed by several rudd around 2 oz each. Then a bottom bait of two catsers brought a 5 lb carp, but only the one.
Out to 2+2 in front, where I found a hard bottom in about five feet of water, and in the next three hours I managed to land three barbel, a 3 lb tench and half-a-dozen more F1s, plus two carp around 6 lb. I also lost two big carp, definitely foulhooked. With an hour to go the fish which had been basically sunbathing atarted to become more animated, and they started swimming a bit faster, coming towards the margins. I hoped they would drop down and feed so tried cat meat and mussel both sides, but never had even a liner. Ten minutes left and I went back out and had the last fish - a 2 lb tench.
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| It was a superb performance from Trevor in the heat - 260 lb 13 oz, all taken mugging on a long pole. |
Trevor Cousins on peg 25, towards the car perk end, absolutely blitzed it with 260 lb 13 oz, every fish taken mugging with a pellet on a long pole. By the end he was absolutely cream-crackered. And then I thought that I should probably have tried it when the fish started moving about towards the end. Second and third went to Peter Harrison and Dave Hobbs who had 153 lb 5 oz and 148 lb 13 oz, also taken mugging.
My measly catch, all taken on two casters, went 49 lb 4 oz, which placed me sixth out of the 12.
Probably worth 4. I love fishing shallow, and when I asked Trevor what he'd had at the start he told me he had had only an F1 in the first 30 minutes. So if I had tried mugging farther out for longer I guess I would have had some of those cruising carp. But that first ten minutes, trying to mug fish close-in, put me off.
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