Alwin Ingham Testimonial Match.

The Wind, The Wind, The Wind.

Since my last entry from a match, the weather seems to have done nothing but be windy, especially at the weekends. You know how it is. You work in a nice warm office all week, the sun is beating down on the glass, and you are baking hot. The trees are not moving an inch. You throw a blade of grass in the air to check for wind and it hits you on the head. You book on a match. You arrive, you pay on, you get to your peg and set up – still no wind. The match organiser shouts time, then the wind goes mental!!!

Anyway, going back to one of my earlier matches. We held a ‘Testimonial Match’ for Alwin Ingham, who is suffering from 2 tumours on his brain. Alwin is a true gent in every sense of the word. In the time that I have known Alwin, I have never heard a bad word from him. You ask him how he fished and he tells no lies. He makes his own floats and if you ask him nicely enough, he would make you a couple of floats. Alwin did a recent article Match Fishing magazine, titled ‘Make Mine A Pint’ due to his liking for fishing maggot all year round.

Apologies if I upset anyone here, but we decided to hold a match for him now whilst he has got time to spend it as things are not looking good and if we did a match for him at a later stage, he may not be around to enjoy our efforts and hard work. Alwin doesn’t smoke or drink, so we are sure that the money raised will be put to good use.

By the time of the draw, there were 96 anglers in attendance, sadly, Alwin wasn’t feeling too well so didn’t attend. I pegged the match across Alders Lake and Cedar Lake, with 70 pegs on Cedar and 34 pegs on Alders lakes. Everyone was hoping for a Cedar Lake draw, but as I explained, the match wasn’t about winning a large amount of money; it was about raising funds for Alwin. With this in mind, the only prizes on offer were 5 man section prizes of £50. The pond owners had provided the lakes for free and raffle prizes were donated by Bob-Co angling centre, Oaks Tackle, Mal Bailey meat cutters and the local Moor & Pheasant pub to name but a few.

I put my hand in the bag and managed to end up with Alders 34. I really (really, really) didn’t want this peg. It is about 19m to the island, so was out of reach as I only had 16m with me. I had Fullstop within earshot on peg 30, Pat Bailey on peg 31 (he could also reach the island with 16m), someone else on peg 33 and Kev ‘Penfold’ Grainger on peg 34. Rumpole was a couple of pegs further away and Sorry Moran was on peg 38 in’t corner. Dynamite Dave Newman was on peg 41, with Magnum the Porno star on peg 40.

Chappy was on Cedar Lake as was my travelling partner, Bram.

My £50 quid section ran from pegs 32 – 36, which as far as the pegs are concerned, no one has a real advantage, so was reasonably fair. Alders Lake holds a lot of ide from ounces to 3lb or so, with carp, skimmers, roach rudd and gudgeon.

My plan of attack was to fish for the ide up in the water, as was most of the anglers on the lake.

For bait I had casters and maggots and a bit of corn for fishing over to the island on either the bomb or the waggler.

I borrowed Bram’s waggler rod – he wouldn’t be needing it. Whilst setting up, I had a few chucks with the waggler rod to ‘get my eye in’. I was getting the waggler to land on a dustbin lid. Penfold commented that ‘I had done that a few times before’. I also had the bomb rod ready set up, so all I had left was to set up the pole. I set up 3 rigs, 2 shallow and 1 deep.

The deep rig was set up hook in the loop style. The rig was a 4x14 Drennan Roach on .10 Silkshock line direct to a size 18 Kamasan B911 eyed hook.

My 2 shallow rigs both incorporated .2g Garbolino DC6 floats. One was set up on .10 Silkshock line and the other was set up on .12 Fox Match Plus line. The .10 rig was set to fish at 1ft deep, with a short line and the .12 was set to fish at 2 – 2.5 ft deep. White hydro on all of the rigs completed the set ups.

At the start of the match an ‘air horn’ sounded from another match. People on my lake started fishing. Let me ask a question, since when have I used an Air Horn to start the matches. Never, so why have people started now? Byron ‘Fullstop’ Dell was one of the said culprits.

When I officially started, I baited up the waggler rod with double maggot and cast over to the island in the hope of catching an early easy carp. First chuck and I managed to cast onto the one single branch that was just touching the water. I pulled and pulled and the rig snapped. No more waggler fishing for me then. Ho Hum!!!

I catapulted a few casters out to 9m and went over the top on the shallow rig, baited up with double red maggot. After about 5 minutes of drip-feeding maggots, the float buried and a 1oz rudd was soon in the net.

I managed to snare a couple more ide and more roach. One thing that I did realise was that whilst fishing the hook in the loop for the roach, I hardly missed a bite, and most of them were lift bites.

When the Air Horn sounded for the match to finish, I told Fullstop that he had to stop fishing, or he will have had more time than those around him. He told me to go forth and multiply.

Marco won the match outright with 77lb from Cedar Lake peg 28 and Lee ‘The Legend’ Barrett won our lake from peg 4 with 60lb. Unfortunately, Pimmy ended up about 4th or 5th and didn’t win a penny as his section was won by Marco, but at the end of the day, the match was about raising funds for Alwin, hence paying section prizes only.

Back at the local pub, the raffle took place and, following on from the stunt that I pulled at Christmas, Woody Baron decided to hide his raffle tickets, but alas, not before Chappy had seen them and informed me of one of his ticket numbers. I needed a yellow ticket to come out first. Middy put his and in the bucket and pulled out a yellow ticket. Right, here goes. Yellow 419, I shouted. Everyone looked at their tickets in anticipation. Woody suddenly stood up and started dancing around. In view of his ticket (?) being the first drawn, he had a choice of raffle prizes. He was calling everyone names, until I told him to sit down. He had me pinned against the wall by my throat. Everyone was falling about laughing. I had got him again!!!!
I was laughing so much, I can’t even remember who won the first prize.

With about 10 raffle prizes to go, Tom asked me, where was the Mal Bailey Meatcutter. I said that Marco had brought it with him. Macro had forgotten that he had it, or did he????

Anyway, in view of the Meatcutter not being available for all the prior raffle winners to pick it, it was decided that the Meatcutter would be the last raffle prize and would go to the winner of that lucky ticket. After all of the raffle prizes had gone, with just the Meatcutter to go, Middy put his hand in the bucket and pulled out none other than………


My ticket!!!! One Meatcutter in the bag, so it wasn’t a bad day after all.

The total amount raised was £1685.00 for Alwin, which is staggering, considering the timescale involved in pulling this event together.

I would personally like to extend a warm welcome to all concerned. I received a telephone call from Alwin, that same night thanking me for everything that we had done. But to be fair, we did it because in Alwin, you couldn’t meet a nicer bloke.