Saturday 8th April 2006

The Oaks Lakes Fishomania Arrives.

I agreed to help the NFA representative with the running of Fishomania competition taking place at The Oaks Lakes. Prior to the draw, I asked Eric “if there is a spare peg at the end of the draw, could I have it?”, to which he replied “yes, providing that all names on the list and names on the reserve list have been exhausted”. I thought, great, I might be able to get on the fisho.

The draw came and went, and it was nice to see some faces that I haven’t seen for some time, and a certain amount of time was allotted to allow any stragglers to turn up and take their place on the Fisho. There was one peg remaining – Cedar 47. Knowing which peg was left, I had second thoughts as peg 47 isn’t a good peg at the best of times (or so I thought prior to my Sunday result!). Eric asked me if I wanted the peg, I couldn’t say "No" fast enough. I then asked the remaining anglers if anyone else wanted a spare fisho peg. There were no takers. With the adverse weather conditions, Cedar 47 wouldn’t have been made any better as the wind would have been side on and it blowing an absolute hooly (?). Lee Barrett (Spring Valley Waters) had drawn a right flier, Peg 62A on Maple. Pete (Respect) Richmond (Lostock Tackle Box) had drawn a good peg on Maple, peg 63. Sadam Richards had drawn peg 63 on Cedar, which had some form from the past couple of matches as Middy had caught 64lb two weeks ago for 2nd place overall and he had had over 30 last weekend from the same peg.

Stuart (Blackworm) Almond had previously asked me for some Dacron Connectors and I had forgotten them on previous matches. I made sure that he handed me the money prior to giving over the connectors and any money transfers are non-refundable and if he didn’t like them it was tough, but I had nothing to worry about, when he saw the connectors, he thought they were sexy. Sad Git!!

Poplars Open Match

I then proceeded to arrange the open match taking place on Poplars Lake, there were 33 of us taking part – non of us wanted the spare fisho ticket!!. I drew peg 30 in the fish tail behind the bungalow. I had Keith (Alf) Garnett for company on one side (peg 32) and Minty Whittaker for company on the other side (peg 30). At the all in, I fruit-shooted a pot of groundbait, with pellet on a size 18 Kamasan B611 to .12 dia. line and a float of 4 x 12 topped it off. I had about 2.5ft of depth to where I was fishing. I waited for about 3 minutes, the float shot under and the pole tip hit the water. A carp of 4lb hurtled all around the swim. Grey hydro through a power top two soon subdued the fish. After approximately 1 hour, I had 4 fish for about 8lb. Minty was starting to put a few fish together. There was a bush between peg 30 and 29. Minty turned round to fish towards said bush and caught 2 fish in quick succession. I tried to my side of the same bush and never had a fish all match. I managed 1 skimmer, 2 perch (both on red maggot), 2 gudgeon, 1 skimmer and 10 carp for 18lb. This put me about 9th place out of the 33 anglers.

Minty won the match with 31lb, 30lb was 2nd and Magnum had 29lb (which included only 1 carp) of ide to finish up third. Minty did well to catch as much as he did, considering that he spent most of the match pulling his rigs out of the willows on the far bank. On more than one occasion, I thought that he was going to snap his Tournament Professional pole. At one stage, he got snagged and pulled for a break; his pole didn’t half hit the water.

Alf on peg 32 had 28lb and won the section. All of the weights in the low and high numbers had a mixture of carp and ide, and the middle numbers had predominantly carp.

Dave (Topshop) Topham on Peg 2 had a mare of a match. It was too windy for him to fish across to the island and ended up fishing down the side. Every time he struck his rigs ended up in the trees. As for his result, he wasn’t even a teeny bopper this week, he had 11lb odd!!

After hanging around, the result was that Lee Barrett had won the fisho contest with over 23 kilo and Respect was 2nd with over 21 kilo. The Bennett’s old man ended up third (if young Andy had been on the peg, I wouldn’t have had a bet on him not winning the fisho, as Ken had drawn peg 55 on Cedar and had a comfortable day with the wind off his back). Congratulations to Lee Barrett, he had been coming up to The Oaks all winter to practice (albeit, the matches were on Cedar Lake), but there is one thing that I have realised about Mr Barrett, he draws better than Rolf Harris!! But then again, you can only catch what is in front of you. Topshop will tell you that. Whilst driving home, Panic Poole told me that Lee had turned up with only worm and caster, so he gave Lee some luncheon meat that he had in his bag. Guess what Lee caught on, and it wasn’t worm or caster!!

Look on the bright side, there is always tomorrow!!!!