Sunday 4th March 2007.

Normal service has resumed!!!

Back to running the Sunday match and following my recent run of results, more people are coming up to me and asking me questions. I knew that I had joined the elite when Darryll ‘Tin Tin’ Taylor even started speaking to me.

I got everything underway and by the time of the draw there were 52 of us on the match. The wind was blowing from peg 1 diagonally across the lake towards peg 36, which meant that a lot of the lake was going to be out of it due to the wind. I put my hand in the bag and pulled out peg 38. I was not going to be a happy teddy bear. The wind would be blowing from right to left. Chappy the jammy so and so had drawn peg 45. The wind would be blowing straight of the top of the island, therefore allowing him to fish across –oh for a peg like that.

I arrived at my peg to find that I had Mick Sykes to my right on peg 39, peg 37 was empty, Rumpole was on peg 36 and Fullstop was on peg 35.

At the start of the match, I set up 4 rigs, 2 for the deeper water and 2 for across. The across rigs were made up using one of my usual .2g Garbolino DC6 floats, set up HITL style. The rig was attached to .10 Preston Powerline straight through to a size 18 Gamakatsu, pellet hook, eyed. I plumbed up across and straight away was hoping that either, I didn’t have to fish there or hoping even more so, for the wind to drop. My second rig for across was a 4x12 Colmic float with a thick plastic bristle. I set this up conventional with a spade end hook. I set the float to fish slightly overdepth, hoping that by dragging the line on the bottom, the float would slow down somewhat.

My two deep rigs included a HITL rig using a .5g Drennan Roach. This was attached to .11 Preston Powerline, straight through to a size 16 Gamakatsu, eyed, pellet hook. My backup deep rig was the same rig, but set up with the conventional spade end hook. For bait I had a few maggots, micro pellets and some 4mm expanders.

At the all in, the wind instantly got stronger and continued to get stronger as the match progressed.

I immediately decided to go across to the farside with the HITL rig on, dropped some micro pellets in, and dropped the rig in baited with a 4mm pellet on the hook.

After about 15 minutes and a couple more fruitshoots of micropellets, I went down the middle after having nothing to show for the foray across.

I dropped in the HITL rig and foul-hooked a fish almost straight away. I re-baited with pellet, and dropped in again. The float settled, then started going against the wind. The lake was towing like mad. I let the float go until it tightlined itself against the pole tip, then I waited for it to go under. After about 5 minutes, the float buried and a carp of about 1lb was soon in the net. I managed to snare another 5 or 6 fish before the peg had all but died.

I came close in, using the same rig and managed to snare a couple of carp before the peg died again.

I was missing bites on the HITL rig, so I dropped in using the ‘normal’ rig. I had set the rig to fish slightly over depth and dropped in. I missed 4 indications/bites in a row, before I connected with a fish. It was foul-hooked and shot off towards safety in the direction of Rumpole.

From bad to worse – then the rain arrived. The rain was coming at me from the right to left and it was driving rain. It could have been worse, Rumpole had the wind and rain blowing straight into his clock.

I could see that Rumpole was starting to get a few fish on corn, close in. I didn’t have any with me. I shouted round to Rumpole to see if I could get a tin of corn off him. He told me to go round to him. I arrived and rummaged through his carryall and found a tin of Green Giants best. As I was walking away, he commented that it would cost me the quid that he was going to have to give to me today.

I tried corn and after 15 minutes, I hadn’t had an indication. I wanted to go home, but with so many quid’s at stake, I was going to have to make a go of it. But I oh so wanted to go home.

Over the next couple of hours, my maggots started to float, my pellets had become sloppy groundbait, my arse was wet, my glasses were smeared, my elbows got wet. I couldn’t wait until I shouted time.

That’s it, enough is enough. It was time. I put my topkits straight in my car, put my pole away wet and waited for the scales to arrive, whilst sat in the comfort and warmth of my car. By the time that the scales had arrived, Gandhi was winning the match with 38lb from peg 21 (wind & RAIN off his back, flat calm in front of him). Fullstop managed to plonk 20lb on the scales. I didn’t think that I had that. Rumpole DNW’d, but tipped back about a dozen carp.

I managed to plonk 21lb odd on the scales. Mick Sykes to my right weighed in 15lb. Peg 42 had 28lb, 43 – 24lb, 44 - ? 45 – 33lb and 46 – 22lb.

Chappy was walking back to his car and there was a funny squelching sound and I thought that it had something to do with the rain, well it did have something to do with the rain, it was to do with the amount of water that was in his trainers, that was squelching around when he walked. His travelling partner, Pimmy, was no better off. He had fished the match all day in a fleece and trainers as he had left his wet weather gear at home.