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Friday, December 05, 2014

Recollections......

I recently featured in the Anglers Mails' -Tales From The Riverbank' and this reminded me of a one or two things....

  • When I was about 12 years old, I was fishing on the River Wharfe at Boston Spa near where I lived on the West End bank and I was fishing with my friend.  It was the height of summer and fish were topping in front of us and no matter what, we could not catch them, so my friend and I hatched a plan.  We got a small stick and tied it to our lines and then caught a couple of blue bottle flies and managed to hook them so as not to kill the fly.  We cast out our 'fly-fishing' tackle and watched as the fly was buzzing away on the river's surface.  A fish came up and rose at my fly, I struck and missed it.   A fish then rose at my friends fly, I said to leave it until it sails away.  Two attempts later the fly disappeared and the stick shot off.  After a brief tussle the biggest chub I had ever seen was in the landing net.  We weighed it, it was just over 5lb - 5lb 3oz to be exact.  We then spent the rest of the day fishing this way and had a couple of dace for our troubles.

  • About 10 - 15 years ago, I used to fish with a club in Leeds called Moorside Angling Club. Moorside Angling Club were pretty much out and out river anglers with maybe 1 or two matches on ponds. Let me ask a question........ In your fishing career to date, how many times have you come 'Joint First' on fishing matches.   I know that when I run the open matches at The Oaks, Thirsk, for about 10 years in that time, there was probably about 3 or 4 joint first anglers - TOPS!!!!  In my first year with Moorside Angling Club, I was never the scales person BUT, somehow managed to come joint first 5 times in my first year with the club.  We were on a match at Nayburn Lock and I drew just below the barge and had 4lb 10oz of small roach on waggler.  The Sandbank pegs were generally where you wanted to draw.  There was a good angler on one of those pegs and when it came to weighing him in, I could see the scales settle about 4lb 7oz and the scales man called the weight at 4lb 10oz - Joint First AGAIN!!!!.  I objected and was over-ruled.  In my first year with the club, I won 11 matches.  At the presentation night, I took a carrier bag with me for all my trophies LOL.  I was the Club and Knockout Champion in my first year with them.  The following year, I got my friend to join Moorside with me and between us we won 13 out of 20 matches.  I left them at the end of my second year. 

  • When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I used to just 'pop down the chute' and go fishing.  The chute was the rainwater run-off pipe from the West End estate in Boston Spa and to get there, I walked across a little meadow at the back of my house and I was more or less on the riverbank.  The amount of times that I would go home with stories of 'should have seen the one that got away' or 'it was this BIG!!!, Honest' to mum and dad, so one day, I thought that I would show them.  I was fishing away and caught a couple of roach on little pieces of earthworm and set up my pike gear and live-baited a small roach.  After about 10 minutes, I got a run on the pike gear and after a 10 minute battle (I was piking with 3lb line and a 7lb hooklength) I had a pike about 4lb in the landing net.  I quickly ran home with the pike in the landing net - it took all of 3 or 4 minutes - to show my mum.  Mum wasn't in.  So I did something.......  Mum arrived home and I was really excited.  I said to mum - 'Mum, come have a look at what I caught'.  So mum followed me and when she saw the pike she screamed.  Not because I had caught a pike.  It was because, I had filled up the bath tub with water and put the pike in the bath.

Got a few more stories to share....

Monday, December 01, 2014

Match 29 - The Penultimate Match - Bottom Pond, Barnburgh Lakes

Match No. 29 - Sunday 19th October 2014

2nd to last match in the Robin Hood AC Summer League was taking place on the bottom pond at Barnburgh lakes.

We have had 3 matches in total, 2 club matches on the middle lake and 1 'knock up' on the bottom lake, and I was favourite to win it as I had won all previous club matches here.  The pressure was on.

Given the way that the wind was blowing I wanted to be on peg 1 - 5 (wind off my back) or pegs 14 - 17 (wind in my face).  I put my hand in the lucky bag and drew peg 23.  Dave Horsfall, Ian 'Sid' Waddell and Paul 'Wilco' Wilson were on pegs 1 - 5 and the Hunter Bros (Alan and Barry) had drawn pegs 14 - 17.  I got to my peg and found that I had Method Michelle to my right and I had lots of room to my left.

I set up 4 rigs and never used a plummet with any of them.  2 x jigga rigs and 2 x standard shallow rigs.  1 x jigga and 1 x shallow to fish at 2.5ft deep and 1 x jigga and 1 x shallow to fish 12-18" deep.  All of the rigs were set to fish with banded 6mm pellet on the hook.  For bait I had 2 bags of venue's own 4mm pellets.

On the team front, there was only Eric the Pheasant and I there.  Eric asked me about his peg.  After I had set up, I went to help out Eric.  I lent him my light hooklength wallet to use as needed as he was fishing maggot, maggot and more maggot down the edge.  We were carrying a 90lb weight advantage in the team event (4058lb - Team Herrington to 3968lb - Team Horsfall).  Team Horsfall had 3 anglers present today.

The match was under way. By the time that I had caught my first fish, Michelle had managed 4 fish on her deep jigga rig.  The wind was blowing at an angle towards my right shoulder and I was throwing 4mm pellets as far as I could, which was only about 7m or so.  I eventually got into a rhythm of feeding and catching fish and every so often, when the swim went quite, I went shallow to the next platform, where I had also been throwing in pellets frequently.

When I had a quick look around every now and again, everyone seemed to be catching fish, this was going to be a close one with some good weights.

That was it match over.  I had caught a few.  Dave Horsfall set the ball rolling with 108lb from peg 1.  Then there were various weights between 69lb (Eric) to 130lb.  Dave Webster set the bar high with a weight of 162lb 3oz.  Frank Brook, thought he had similar and put 113lb on the scales.  Next to weigh was Alan Hunter, after 2 weighs, he managed to snare 136lb 3oz, which is his first 100lb+ weight.  Barry was admitting to a little bit more...and managed to put 174lb 1oz on the scales - holy crap, where did all that come from.  Colin the Worm had 130lb.  Now it was Michelle's turn, she put 64lb 2oz on the scales, I thought that she had more than that.  Now it was my turn.  after 3 weighs, I had managed to amass a total of 194lb 5oz and a win.  This weight is my best ever match weight.

On the team front, Eric and I amassed just shy of 265lb between us.  Team Horsfall made huge inroads into our lead with a team total of just under 325lb - well done guys.

Next match is the last in the series and will conclude all titles up for grabs.