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Saturday, December 09, 2006

Updated Blog.

My good lady wife has been away for the past 3 weeks, one of my staff has decided to hand in her notice at work (office administrator required, salary c £14k) and I have been washing and ironing my oldest two lads school and home clothes. I have had both the month end and the year end accounts to prepare along with the VAT return. So as you can see, I haven’t had time to fart!!!

Well here goes, I will try to condense the activities of the past 3 weeks into as few pages as possible.

I was on a high following sitting behind Alwin as I had a 3rd and a 7th overall.

Sunday 19th November, I drew peg 77 and for company, I had Rumpole of the Bailey to my left on peg 76 and Marco Drury’s brother ‘Dino’ to my right on peg 78. Team Glum’s ‘El Capitan – Stef ‘Slim’ Armitage’ was within earshot on peg 75. Marco was on peg 74 (with corner peg 73 empty, I hastily add) and Charisma Pawlett was on end peg 80.

When I arrived at my peg, there was a frost on the ground. In defence of my performance, the area that I was in has not produced anything since the middle of summer. At the moment, the best weight from pegs 68 (ish) round to peg 80 is lower than the worst weight from the rest of the lake. The reason being that although the sun does shine ‘ooooppp North’ there is a wall of 40ft conifers and evergreens some 12m behind you. The only saving grace is that if there is a strong Southerly wind, you don’t tend to feel it.

Whilst I was setting up there was a plethora of quid side bets flying about, all of which were aimed at yours truly. Haven’t they seen my results from the previous two weeks? Obviously not. In addition to the obligatory quid’s with the usual suspects, I set up a quid with Dino, Rumpole and Slim. A couple of easy quid’s were gonna come my way. Marco decided to stick his beak in and also roped me into a quid. Charisma wouldn’t have a quid ‘the wuss’.

Steve ‘Toastie’ Hall, who was looking somewhat the worse for wear, courtesy of a glass or a bottle (one of the two) tried to rope me into a quid. I hastily declined.

I set up the usual array of Garbolino DC6’s for across and a couple of Drennan Roach rigs for down the middle.

I kicked off down the middle and observed all and sundry starting to bag around me. It took a while, but eventually a carp fell to my double red maggot hookbait. After about 50 minutes down the middle, I had 3 carp for about 2lb and both Rumpole and Slim had about 6 carp. I decided to have a look across. I had been flicking the odd couple of maggots or so, on both the line across and down the middle.

I dropped in across and managed to snare 3 carp before the gnomes either side of me had managed another bite. My peg was ripe for reaping.

Over the remainder of the match, I swapped between down the middle and across trying to pick the odd fish up of each line. I ended up with 19 fish and plonked 15lb odd on the scales. ‘Slim’ managed to snare 8lb as did ‘Rumpole’. Dino Dnw’d (but I didn’t take his quid). Word of warning, don’t have a quid with ‘Slim’. He tried to pay me in the plastic money that you use when you are in nursery school and you buy a plastic tin of peas (you know the money that I mean). Marco upset the applecart due to plonking 19lb on the scales. I was also glad that I never pushed Charisma into his quid as he also plonked 18lb on the scales.

My section winner (after a bit of fiddling J (chin up Marco)) was Chappy who was the first angler in our 11 peg section. There were a couple of tears following the announcement of the overall result and section winners, both from myself (as I had to give another quid to Chappy, which considering that he had been out of pocket for the past two weeks and couldn’t afford his weekly porno mag (The Sunday Sport), I found pretty hard to take) and the other person that had a ‘sad on’ with me was Marco as he was adamant that I had fiddled the section in order to award the section prize to Chappy.

I put the smaller sections at the beginning of the lake (2 x 10 peg sections) and the larger sections at the back end of the lake (5 x 11 peg sections) as I do every week, but alas, there was no consoling Marco.

The following week (Sunday 26th November), I dipped into the drawbag and managed to extract peg 21 from the deepest, darkest depths of sorrow. It is utter @h{ite and that is at the best of times

Upon arriving at my peg, I had ‘Fullstop’ Byron on peg 19 (the better peg), Raymondo Wallace on peg 20 and ‘Meatcutter’ Bailey on peg 22. Meatcutter had been on peg 23 last week so was in tune with this particular area of the lake. On yesterdays match the best weight from this corner was 16lb. A good day was not on the cards. Meatcutter was quickly added to the quid corner for the day.

Peg 21 is a corner peg on the outside of a bend with the island being almost at a right angle. The island part of the peg is one of the shortest pegs on the whole lake.

At the start of the match, I fished down to my left hand side at about 8m along the bank and about 4m out, fishing just at the base of the deepest part of the corner peg. After about 20 minutes, I got my first indication and missed it. I dropped back in and managed to hook into something. As I was shipping back, the hook pulled. It took a full 40 minutes plus before I put my first fish in the net. A small F1 of about 8oz.

After about 2 hours, I had managed to put about 8 fish in the net. I decided to have a look across to the far side. I dropped in and the float shot sideways straight away. A chub of about 12 oz was soon in the net. This was my one and only fish from the far side.

With about 2 hours to go I observed Raymondo catching a few fish on his top 3 kit. He seemed to be fishing about 4ft deep down the nearside slope. I decided to change tack. I got another rig out a 4 x 12 Drennan Roach and plumbed up at the base of the near slope and found that I had about 5.5ft on a long top two kit. I baited up with corn and fed a couple of maggots and a grain of corn. Over the next couple of hours, I had managed to put about 15 fish in the net, but alas they were all small. I looked at my watch and saw that the match was all but finished. I waited for Meatcutter to ship out, chuck a bit of bait on top of his float (he had also come inside on his top 2 kit). Just as his float settled, I shouted time. Hard luck mate. Just as I shouted time, my float trembled (it must have been the vibrations from me shouting ‘Time’). I waited all of 10 seconds and the float shot under. I had to chuck back a carp of about 12oz. That fish may cost me as it was very close between Meatcutter and I. Fullstop managed to put 14lb on the scales. Raymondo tipped back. I weighed in 16lb 8oz. Now Meatcutter’s turn. He put 16lb 12oz on the scales. I had been done. Marco had weighed me in. I think it was revenge from last weeks match when he didn’t win his section.

Sunday 3rd December 2006. Nearly Xmas time chaps. The weather is getting colder. The wind is getting stronger. The rain is blinking freezing. All I am waiting for now is the snow. The wind was ‘BLOWING’ from a South-Westerly direction, therefore making for a good day for the pole repairers.

I put my hand in the bag and managed to pull out peg 43. At least the wind was going to be more off my back rather than side on (or that it was I thought). When I arrived at my peg, the peg was more or less coming from right to left, although it did occasionally decide to come off my back. I had Pat Bailey to my left on peg 42 and Neil Chapelow on peg 44. Meatcutter was in earshot on peg 45. The return quid was back on.

Meatcutter asked me a serious question at the start of the match. ‘Will I catch on the bomb rod?’ ‘Don’t be daft idiot’ or words to that effect erupted from my mouth. He still set it up.

I set up 3 rigs to fish 3 different lines, 1 on the top 4 kit, one at the base of the far slope and one across. I fed a couple of maggots on the close in line and flicked the same out to the other two lines. I baited up with corn and dropped in. Before I had even had an indication, Pat had managed to get 4 carp off the far side. My float buried and a carp of about 1lb was soon in the net. I managed to get back to 5 – 4 with Pat still in the lead.

In view of me now starting to get a couple of fish, Pat decided to come close in and have a look. He dropped in and caught a bream of about 3lb, then a carp of about 2lb. I was way behind again.

Meatcutter had managed to snare a few. He gave a quick shout to me and I observed him chucking the tip rod out. FOOL!!! About 20 seconds later Meatcutter shouted at me ‘Mick, I thought you said the tip didn’t work’. Basket!!!!

About 15 minutes later I shouted over to Meatcutter ‘Have you finished with your bomb rod?’. I even had to walk over to him to get the rod, the lazy sod. I chucked it out and I managed to get ‘ABSOLUTELY NOTHING’. I told you the bomb rod doesn’t work. The rod was a Garbolino model (not sure which), but it was fantastic. Nice, soft and responsive. Gonna have to get me one of them.

That was it, match over. I felt as though I hadn’t really caught anything (no change there then, I suppose). Pat had been getting the odd fish, all of which were a considerably better stamp than mine. I ended up with 19 fish for 16lb. Pat had 21 fish for 32lb. Ho Hum. Meatcutter put 23lb on the scales. To my defence, Neil Chapelow only managed 11lb odd.

There you go, that’s it. I’ll try to go back to the more informative report as soon as I can.

With regards to the quids, over the past 3 matches or so, I have won some and I have lost some. All I can say is thank god that I have a regular quid with the Orc, at least then I manage to take a quid home nearly every week.