Sunday 14th January 2007.
Well well well, where do I start. I suppose first of all, with a belated Happy New Year and tightlines to you all.
So what has happened since my last blog? Here goes…
We had our Christmas Cheer on the 17th December with a first prize of £500, 2nd £300 and 3rd £200 with five man sections winning £100. I drew peg 39 and had to contend with pegs 36 to 40. The Pacifier was on peg 36, Neil Chapelow on 37, Age Concern on 38 and Slob Armitage on peg 40. This should be a walk in the park. After 5 hours I had amassed a total weight of 11lb odd. I had 14 F1 carp. Slob had 13 carp and put 15lb on the scales. The Pacifier managed to snare 16lb odd for a section win and £100. He had managed to capture one of Gandhi’s (one of the lads that works in the café) pets. The smallest of these carp go 6lb and have reached over 8lb. Due to not winning his section, Slob declined going back to the pub for the banter and the piss taking. This is where the real fun begins.
‘Charisma’ Pawlett won the match and £500 with 28lb odd. David and Tom Kaye (the pond owners) had donated a few prizes to go with all of the Xmas alcoholic prizes. One of the said prizes was a 28” TV, which was duly won my non other than Andy ‘Rosie and Jim’ Stonner.
Prior to the raffle, I had a few prizes to hand out. I awarded a bottle of bubbly to the lowest weight weighed in on the match. Age Concern was on for a double has he along with 2 other compadres weighed in 1lb 12oz. Age Concern weighed in 1lb 1oz last year. He commented that the wanted the triple crown at next years (or is that this years) event.
A ballot was held on the Oaks Banter discussion forum for the ‘Numpty of the year’ and after getting over half of the total votes (11 votes out of a total of 21 brave souls, brave enough to post a vote) unfortunately John ‘Chappy’ Chapman was this years winner. He graciously accepted his bottle of plonk for his troubles, that was after chasing me around the pub.
Whilst partaking in the raffle, I devised a new sport – ‘Baron Baiting’. Let me explain….
Whilst announcing the winners of the various raffle prizes, I eye-spied Lizard Baron’s raffle tickets. I put my hand in the bowl and selected one of the tickets. I looked at it, covered up the first number (3) and proceeded to announce the winning ticket as ‘Blue 21’. The Lizard woke up and proceeded to dance about, shouting profanities as he had finally won something. After finally getting him out from under his rock, I had to tell him that I had got it wrong and that winning number was actually ‘Blue 321’. I was allowed to breath some 2 minutes later, after he had let go of my throat. Everybody was in stitches. I was laughing so much, I had tears streaming down my face. Some 10 raffle tickets later, I went for the double. I shot and I scored (my throat was red after this episode). To his credit, the Lizard took it in the vain that it was meant to be.
A word of advice, never join together with Xman Exley to get a raffle ticket or anything that relies on luck/chance. We must have had nearly 60 or 70 raffle prizes and Xman managed to dodge all of them, despite having half a book of raffle tickets in front of him. I think that out of the total prizes on offer from both the match and the raffle, Xman ended up with ‘absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, zip, a big fat ZEROOOOOO!!!’.
All in all, it was a good do. The Kaye’s had put on a spread of food for us, donated some raffle prizes, gave us the lake for free, and that was just for this match. The pond owners do try to accommodate and look after all of the visiting anglers and this is their way of showing their appreciation.
David and Tom, thank you and I can safely say that that is from all the visiting anglers who go to The Oaks Lakes.
In view of my one of my administrators leaving, I was carrying out interviews at work week commencing 18th December. One of the blokes that applied for the job, that I got in for an interview had a weird laugh to say the least. Following his interview, and after he had left/was shown off the premises, the Sales Manager asked me what the noise was coming from the interview room. I explained that he thought that he had said something funny and was laughing. The Sales Manger thought that he was having a fit.
On one of the other CV’s that I received, a girl had completed her name and address details, the proceeded to describe herself attributes as follows (these were serious entries on her CV):
Height: 5ft 4”
Hair: Brown
Weight: 8 stone
Size: 10
Bust: 34 C
I was nearly tempted to get her in for an interview, just to see if she was lying about her bust size.
One of the other applicants (male) had a good CV, that indicated that he had a degree in something or other. Whilst interviewing him, I was pointing out some of the duties that he would have to undertake and mentioned ‘typing letters’. He replied that he didn’t know how to type letters, but would use the internet to source how to type letters so that he wouldn’t forget next time. He will go far, won’t he!!!!
Anyways, back to the fishing. I managed to get off over the Xmas period to Naburn Lock at York with a mate of mine – Nick ‘Chod’ Garbutt. We decided to fish the canal section and balled it in with groundbait (a 50/50 mix of Sensas Lake and brown crumb) laced with casters. I fished with .5g rigs using both maggot and casters as bait. I managed to snare about 50 roach between 1 oz to 5 oz (mainly 1 – 2oz in size) and maybe a dozen perch of between 2 oz to 8 oz. Chod had a similar number of fish, but had few bigger stamp fish. He had fed hemp and I wonder if that had drawn in and helped to hold the larger stamp of fish. An enjoyable day was had by both of us, that was until I decided to check the depth of where I had been fishing, literally. On the towpath, there was a little ledge on the water line of about 6” wide. I decided to put my foot on it in order for me to rinse out my bait boxes. My foot slipped and I found out that it was deeper than 5’ 10” as I had to swim out. This was on one of the coldest, windiest days at the back end of last year. The water was some 8ft deep for you information. I clambered out using one of the hand rails on the tow path (I think that people fall in quite regular here to the extent that they have hand rails installed similar to what you will find in a swimming pool). In view of wearing my Preston’s Dri-Fish 150 suit, my feet and lower legs (from knee to ankle) and my hair were the only things that were wet. My Preston Dri-Fish 150 had done me proud. My phone had gone on the blink as some water had got in it, I put the phone on one of the car heating vents and by the time that I had got home the phone was working again (and still is).
Sunday 31st December. I drew peg 40 which was a peg away from where I was on the Xmas Cheer match and had Timothy ‘Sorry’ Moran for company to my right on peg 41. I was after a re-match in view of him taking a quid off me (or is it two quid) during the warmer months. After 5 hours I amassed 14lb odd. Sorry ended up with 11lb odd. Oh, he was also a quid down to boot. Chappy ended the last match of the year in the same vein as the first pound side bet by taking my quid again. I think that for 2007 I will pay him £52 as a lump sum and ask him for £2 back should I win. He said that I should pay him for the year and make do with that with no refunds or anything. I said that I will think about it not!!!
I thank you for reading thus far and I will try to get the next instalment up and running in the v. near future. Keep coming back and having a read to see if there is anything new.
