Sunday 10th September 2006 – The Oaks, Sessay.

For the past few Saturday’s or so, I have been taking one of my son’s sea fishing off Scarborough Harbour. I have been using a 2lb test curve carp/pike rod and I have also purchased a couple of spinning rods, one of 7ft and one of 9ft. I have been fishing with 1 oz lead weights with a long tail and a couple of hooks going up the line, fishing with squid as bait. It has been enjoyable because it has been different. Take yesterday for example. We caught 4 flatties and about 60 little Pollack or Coalfish (not sure which) and all of this was in about 4 hours on a high tide.

Having little fishing trips like this fire me up for a Sunday. You know how it is, when you aren’t doing as well as you know what you can and should be doing, you get a little bit dejected and that is the stage that I am at, at the moment. Saying that though, I enjoyed myself two weeks ago when I was fourth as I had caught a few. I am not bothered about winning an envelope, for me it is about catching fish. If I caught 70lb and came 10th, I would have enjoyed it as much as catching 40lb and winning the match.

As far as venues go, Sessay must be one of the hardest venues that I have fished. A few years back I used to fish places like Raker Lakes at York, Lindholme at Leeds and even the old lakes, Swallow, Mallard and Dragonfly at Woodlands Lakes, Thirsk. I won my fair share of matches on all of the above venues including winning the series at both Raker Lakes and Lindholme (Winter and Summer). But for some reason, I just cannot seem to be able to do it at Sessay. The venue is fair, you do not know where the winner is going to come from and the class of angler that fish there are amongst, if not, the best commercial anglers in the North East.

I also believe that the draw is currently less than kind to me at the moment. In my last 10 matches at Sessay, I have drawn in the same area, pegs 3 – 6, 6 times and the other times I have been on peg 36 (50+lb), 37 (25lb), 64 (74lb) and 69 (19lb). The funny thing is, is that there is 80 pegs on the lake. Why oh why can’t I move about a bit?

Today was no exception!!! By the time of the draw there were 43 of us ready for the match. The jackpot pegs were pegs 11 - Ray Wallace, 58 – Martin Murphy and Moi – Peg 7!!

Peg bloody 7. I don’t care if it is/was a jackpot peg, I still didn’t want to be there. Just possibly, due to the fact that I keep drawing in the same area, am I going to my peg with a negative attitude?

Talking about attitudes, what about this. Dean Smith turned up to fish the match. He travelled all the way from South of York. When he arrived, he asked me how many people were on the match. I told him that I had about 40 names. He didn’t pay on. He went back home to either pleasure fish or do whatever. What is that all about? Just because there wasn’t 50 on the match. Doesn’t he enjoy his fishing? If he fished the match, no doubt he would have probably won an envelope, which would have paid for his fishing. You can’t win them all.

Anyway’s you can but try, sometimes life throws up all sorts of surprises.

I had managed to source some quid action by way of Chappy (peg 61), Orc (peg 46) and Nightie (peg 21). Chappy, speaks for himself. Orc, possibly a quid coming my way and Nightie had drawn the same peg that Young Harry Potter had won off on Thursday’s open match. It wasn’t looking good. Comeback Macky and Pacifier.

I arrived at my peg to find that I had Ron Jeremy look-alike, Ray Singh to my left on peg 5 and the Kamasan Open, Andy Middleton, winner to my right on peg 8. ‘Old Lad’ Jonny Kenning was further round on peg 9.

For bait I had 3 pts of pellets (a mixture of two bags of Skinz in yellow and brown), Skinz for hook bait along with some 4mm and 6mm expanders and a tin of corn. My main plan of attack was to fish pellet up in the water.

Peg 7 is a corner peg on the end of the island. Peg 8 can also go down the side into the corner as the corner is about 15m round the arc. The wind was blowing from left to right straight into my corner.

As I was setting up, I heard the funniest thing all day. Ena Sharples was sat on his box setting up, when all of a sudden he chirped up and said of all things “I’m gonna be quiet today”. I nearly fell off my box laughing as did Ron Jeremy.

The rigs.

In view of trying to get them to come shallow, I set up the following:

Shallow rig – was a 4 x 10 Garbolino DC6 float set up on .11 Preston Powerline straight through to a size 18 Kamasan B911 hook. I had approximately 2ft of line between pole float and pole tip. This would allow me to follow the fish up and down in the water.

Shelf rig – was a 4 x 12 version of the above float. This was set up on .13 Preston Powerline straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911 hook. I plumbed up across and found about 2ft of depth just on the edge of the shelf. I used the same float to plumb up down the side.

I was ready. I decided to go and have a chat with Old Lad prior to the start of the match. Whilst I was sat behind him, he was giving me a little ‘pep talk’, but he also said that he hated my peg.

At the all in, I cupped a little bit of bait down the side and a bit of bait at 12m on the edge of the shelf. Then like a whirling dervish, I started to catapult the assorted pellets out to 11m. After 30 minutes, I caught my first carp (well, fish for that matter) about 2lb. It was another 30 minutes before I caught another one. Middy on peg 8 had caught about 6 or so, all from the far side.

After 1 ½ hours, I thought that enough was enough, they don’t want to come up and sacked the up in the water method. I then concentrated on fishing both down the side and across. I was rotating both swims trying to get fish off either of the lines, with little success. Middy wasn’t fairing any better.

At the halfway stage, I would anticipate that I had caught about 14lb made up of about 8 or 9 carp. I managed to snare a few down the side, then they would disappear. You’d wait a bit, then they’d come back. They wouldn’t stay put.

By the end of the match, I was admitting to about 22lb. I had had a crap day, just couldn’t catch on any of my lines. Middy had also struggled, he will put it down to being slightly inebriated, I think that it was because he is crap. He’s nearly as bad as me.

Ron Jeremy was admitting to 40lb and I thought that Old Lad had about 70lb or so. By the time that the scales had arrived, Ena had weighed in 43lb (blimey, keeping quiet must have worked), Ron Jeremy had 42lb. I plonked 25lb on the scales. Middy had 34 and Old Lad’s 70lb turned out to be 95lb. What do I know.

To give you an idea of the area that I was in was like, the weights were as follows by peg; 1 – 27lb, 3 – 43lb, 5 – 42lb, 7 – 25lb, 8 – 34lb, 9 – 95lb, 11 – 20lb, then you get 13 – 57lb, 15 – 58lb, 17 – 38lb and 19 – 67lb, 21 36lb. Pegs 24 – 34 had a lowest weight of 54lb with a total of over 500lb weighed in between 7 anglers.

Full result:

1. John Kenning (Moorfields) 95-3-0, carp and silver fish, pole and maggot, peg 92. Rob Minikin (Harrogate Angling Services) 93-0-03. Lee Harrison (Van den Eynde) 92-12-04. Gareth Drury (Harrogate Angling Services/ Oaks) 90-1-05. Rob Morley (Wakefield) 78-1-06. Darren Taylor (Whizzo) 69-12-0.

As Old Lad went past me, he said that I will have to give him a ‘pep talk’ next time. He didn’t even pay me any money for the pleasure.

Talking of money, I was even further out of pocket as Orc DNW’d (and drove off without paying), Nightie had 36lb and Chappy ended up with 47lb.

I made a hasty exit. See you all next week.