I went to Risby again on Saturday 29th July, to fish a match on the Tench Lake. I went with Tyersal Angling Club again, so I had the pleasure of fishing with Catkiller, Coco the Clown and Tombstone to name but a few.

I gave F1 a lift again, but this time I invested in one ear protector, due to being deaf in my left ear, I only needed to cover up my right ear and I couldn’t hear the little twerp. Saying that, he talked that much, he melted my only ear protector. Talk about enthusiasm!!!

Following a decent breakfast in the lakeside café, we were ready for the draw. At the draw, I put my hand in the hat and managed to snare Jackpot peg 25. There was the obligatory comment of ‘That’s safe then?’ and the like. But some one also said that I wasn’t eligible to win it as I was not a member of the club. Should I win, it will be interesting!!!

I arrived at my peg to find that a few fish were crashing about at 15m plus and there were a few carp cruising about. It looked promising. I had match organiser ‘Beamer’ to my left on peg 24, Catkiller was on 23, Pete Cressey drew peg 18, F1 was on about peg 30 and I had Lee ‘Spiceworld’ Helliwell to my right on peg 27, peg 26 was empty. Coco Harrison was on about peg 10 and Tombstone was on peg 14 (or thereabouts).

Some one told me that Tombstone had applied for a Jockeys Riding Licence, but was turned down for being too small. Ho Hum. During the match, whilst he was setting up, he went for a walk and went missing. It was only when the wind blew and moved a blade of grass could we see him. He owns a Brilo Stax box with about 10 empty pole trays on it. I think that they are so that people can see him when he is sat down on his box.

I set up 4 rigs as follows:

Rig one was a Gaz Malham float taking 4x14. I set this up on .16 Ultima Power Match line direct to a size 14 Drennan Barbless Carp eyed hook. I made this rig from the hair backwards in order to fish direct and to also tie a Korum Baitspike onto the rig. I plumbed up at 5m slightly to my right, where I found 4ft of depth.

I also set up one rig to fish at 14m on the deck. I used a .5g Garbolino DC4 float, again with a Baitspike also, on .16 Ultima Power Match line. I used this diameter of line as it is quite thin, yet strong and supple and I wasn’t sure of what size of fish I was going to encounter. I plumbed up and found that it was about 6ft deep.

I then set up 2 shallow rigs as follows:

The first one was a 4 x 12 Gaz Malham float (still not sure of the pattern), which I set up on .16 Ultima Power Match line direct to a size 14 Drennan Eyed Carp Match hook, incorporating a Korum Baitspike. I set this rig to fish at half depth (about 3ft deep).

My second shallow rig was a rig that I was going to use by varying the depth, anything from 12” to 2ft deep. I used a .1g Garbolino DC2 float, which was attached to .16 Ultima Power Match line again, fishing direct to a size 14 Drennan Eyed Carp Match hook also with a Baitspike. When fishing shallow for carp and using either pellets or meat as bait, I am a firm believer in using the Baitspikes as you are able to slap your rig and bait down on the water, without the bait falling off.

For bait I had 3 tins of meat, ½ of which, I covered in Carp Vaders’ Predator Plus, which I then placed in the fridge overnight, and the other half ‘au naturale’, I also had some pellets and I took along a tub of Carp Vaders’ Method Mix Groundbait, in order to see whether or not I could put it to use. I mixed the two ‘meats’ together for feeding. Prior to fishing with the meat, I covered it in water for about 5 minutes, this pales the meat. Think about it this way. If you leave meat in water what colour does it go? It pales.

We’re off. At the start of the match, I put some meat in a Fox toss pot and shipped out to 14m with the full depth rig baited up with some red Predator Plus meat. I dropped the meat in and the rig over the top. I was in, literally as quick as that. I was the first one into a fish. Most other people on the match were still potting in their bait. After a brief tussle, I managed to get it into the net. 3lb first put in. Not bad. I re-baited and dropped back in. After a longer wait this time, about 3 minutes, I was in again. I started to feed a few pieces of meat with the catapult. I got my second fish out, this one weighed about 1lb. I managed to catch another one on the deep rig before I started to get linered, time to go shallow me thinks.

I baited up the DC 2 shallow rig with meat on the hook and set the rig to fish at about 2ft deep. I shipped out and dropped in. After a couple of minutes of feeding meat and lifting and slapping the rig back down, I was in. My first fish up in the water. I had it on for no more than 10 seconds before I lost it. Probably foul-hooked. I brought my rig back and threw the scale into my net (not really). I shallowed up a touch, to about 18” deep and went back out. 1 hour into the match and I had about 10lb. The only other person that I could see catching was Spiceworld on the next peg. What was he doing?

After seeing Spiceworld ship out some chopped worm and Predator Plus, I devised a cunning plan. In order to introduce some Predator Plus into the swim, I got the Method Mix and added lots and lots of water to create a sloppy mix. Once it was over-wetted, I then added a huge squirt of Predator Plus to the mix. Here goes.

I put some of the mix in a Fox Tosspot, baited up my hook with a piece of red Predator Plus meat and dropped the mix in and the rig over the top. After some 30 – 40 seconds, the float buried and with the way that it was nodding its head, I was attached to something quite substantial. The Black Hydro tried its best to get dragged from the pole and I found that I had to play the fish at 14m, which is against my religion as I usually, just start to ship back slowly. This was a good fish!!! After a 5 minute battle, I had the fish back to the top 4 kit. I unshipped there and played the fish on that for a while. I started to think that the fish might be foul hooked as I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, when all of a sudden, it’s head poked out of the water. It was a really good fish. After a further 3 or 4 minutes, I managed to fold it into my landing net. I was giddy, and I would estimate that the fish weighed about 14lb. Boy, did I give a huge sigh of relief. I had a rest for a minute or so, to catch my breath.

I then proceeded to catch a carp every put in (considering not many other people were catching) whether I was having to wait 30 seconds or 10 minutes. The fish were moving up and down in the water and I had to keep swapping between the two shallow rigs. Since I had started to introduce the Predator Mix, my peg had turned into a Jacuzzi and bubbles were erupting everywhere. The fish were blowing all over and they were not on the bottom.

The method mix had lots of particles in it (pieces of corn, hemp, maize, pellets and such) and was a very sticky mix until I added copious amounts of water. I think that due to the varying weights and sizes of the particles, and the Predator Plus, the fish were feeding at all depths in the water column and I was having to find them by continuously changing depths and rigs. Every time that I dropped in on the deep rig, I got linered to death and couldn’t connect with a fish.

Halfway through the match, I observed Coco playing a fish. Observed is sometimes a scary word. Just as Coco struck, I am sure a jumbo jet in the jet stream had to swerve to avoid the top of his pole. He then proceeded to try to drag it to the top of the lake whilst trying to bend his pole past the realms of technology and beyond. It looked like he was using a 10m swingtip. After everyone had observed that he can catch a fish, he then went on to net the fish to a round of applause. It must have weighed all of 4lb, but at least everyone knew that he had it on.

With about an hour and a half of the match left, I decided to try to up the pace by shortening the line between the pole float and pole tip and also introduce more meat by the catapult whilst still feeding the Predator Mix. Over the next hour, I managed to snare about 4 fish. Something wasn’t right. I put my other rig back on that was set to fish at half depth and added 3 more fish in the last 20 minutes or so. I had messed up, big time, but would it cost me?

Towards the end of the match, Mark, who is the travelling companion of Captain Mainwaring, snagged the near side reeds using his Daiwa Tournament Professional pole. After a prolonged tussle, he managed to break his pole at the No. 4 and 5 sections, leaving his top 3 floating in the lake. He then grabbed hold of his sections that were behind him and threw them into the trees behind him, with such force that Steve Backley would have been proud of his javelin attempt, breaking some further sections. ‘YOU DIDN’T WANT TO DO THAT, DID YOU?’ At the end of the match, I asked him what line had he been using and he replied 20lb, as he had been done on 16lb line!!! Yeah, whatever.

I was hoping to have 70lb + with a possibility of having nearly 80lb. I had managed to snare a few, but not sure on numbers as I don’t really count the number of fish that I have caught. Coco failed to catch any more fish following the Sonic Boom that was created from his strike.

As I lifted my net out and I saw the big carp again, I had a change of heart about its size. I would estimate that it weighed about 12lb and not my original 14lb guess. I got Spiceworld to take a photo, but upon looking at it, they had made a mini movie and Catkiller was in the back ground taking the piss. Catkiller is that ugly, I won’t bother scaring all you readers away from this or any future blog's by publishing the movie or any stills. My first weigh went 49lb odd and I still had a few fish left in the net.

Spiceworld's first weigh went 53lb 4oz. He had a few fish in his net, this was gonna be close. His second weigh was just shy of 15lb. Bugger - he has ounced me (8oz to be precise).

Spiceworld (He informs me that he is no relation to Ginger Spice), won the match with 68lb 2oz. I was second with 67lb 10oz and Alan (?) was 3rd with 44lb.

Following the results, and after having a chat with a couple of the other lads on the match, I was still left with a question. Why do they call it the ‘Tench Lake’ as there were no more than a dozen tench caught throughout the match by 25 anglers?