With Alders being a local venue for me, I was able to set the alarm for a little later than most, but still wanted to get there early. I arrived at the venue nice and relaxed to be met by Trevor and Sophie in the shop chatting away to Dai and Dan, a couple of lads I had not seen in over 10 years, both looked good although Dan has grown a lot since. With bait and breakfast paid it was down to sorting out the tackle and getting down to the cafe.
Slowly but surely, the other site members started to arrive, Red Leader, Pete, Mermaid, Chris, Mickyboy, Len Wade and Boggis all putting in an appearance. With a Full English washed down with a couple of hot mugs of tea, I was set for the day. With the pools paid and a brief agenda of how the day is planned out, it was soon onto the draw.
Both Mick and I discussed where we both fancied to be, me choosing 6,7 or 29, Mick opting for any peg opposite the cafe, 27,28,29 or 30.
Mick puts his hand in and as expected draws peg 29, I cannot believe how consistently well he draws. As for me I go into the bin of dreams and peg 27, a good steady peg and one that I was happy with. I would hope to catch on the tip to start, and later on the pole lines long.
For bait I had a pint of dead reds for feeding on one pole line and a hook-bait for the tip. Three pints of live red maggots treated with some Atomic Cloud, half a bag of fishery micros and a few 6mm hard hook pellets.
I set up a maggot feeder for fishing the island and 2 long pole lines, one .3g the other .5g MW margin floats in case the wind got up. Both were strung shotted on .15 NGuage to a size 16 KPMB .13 hook-length. I also set up another rig to fish 7m in around 2ft of water, I did not expect to catch here as the water was very clear, but you never know. I would regret it if they rocked up and I was not prepared for them.
With the match split into sections, mine consisted of Dan on 21, myself 27, Len Wade on 28, Mick on 29 and Paul on peg 30. At the all in I started off feeding both long pole lines one with dead reds the other with fishery micros. Picking up the maggot feeder I cast out to the island , sunk my line and a few little taps saw a 6oz skimmer in the net. Out again and waited, Pete Morton on peg 3 was into a carp, Linda (Mermaid) was also into her first fish. 10 minutes later and the tip goes round and my first carp was in the net. Another 15 minutes go by and nothing so a quick look on the pole, no bites over any of the 3 lines so it was back onto the tip.
Barry on peg 2
Another carp, after 10 minutes and I was thinking it could possibly be a feeder match. An hour had passed and I had not seen a carp caught on anyone's pole line. That changed when I saw peg 4, Chris land one.
Chris started the ball rolling on the pole line.
The waggler getting done by the feeder
Trevor Price was "getting battered" by Linda off the next peg and was swapping between waggler and long pole.I was waiting longer and longer for a bite, so it was back onto the long pole.It was obvious the lake had switched off, there was a lot of cold water going into the lake, from the rain clouds above and also from the filtering effects from the other lakes.It was going to be a hard match, but also a fair one.
I managed to nick a few skimmers over the micro line but still had nothing over the maggot line. Re-feeding the maggot line I started to ping a few maggots as well over the top. This seemed to have an effect as I nicked odd carp, along with a couple of bigger skimmers. Again no-one was setting the world alight and it was a case of heads down and keep plugging away. I could hear Mick catching on 29 and could see Dan nicking odd fish on the tip from 21.
Mick concentrating hard
At the all out I had 7 carp for around 25lb plus 7lb of bits and was telling anyone 30lb. Mick was also admitting to 30lb so it would be close for the MK Nugget. Packing up I thought about improvements or would I / should I have done anything different. To be honest, I do not think so. perhaps a method feeder rather than maggot feeder, pole lines generally worked as I expected, the water was very clear, it also seemed that fish moved in and out of the peg, perhaps that was due to the spraying effect of the catapult. Still I felt I had fished a good, tidy match.Overall
1st Linda 65-12 Peg 7
2nd Pete 47-13 Peg 3
3rd Trev 44-13 Peg 6
4th Dai 42-07 Peg 18
5th Keith 33-08 Peg 27
6th Madd 33-00 Peg 12
7th Mick 32-08 Peg 29
8th Dan 29-12 Peg 21
9th Alan 19-13 Peg 20
10th Chris 17-05 Peg 5
11th Paul 13-02 Peg 30
12th Barry 11-02 Peg 2
13th Len 10-00 Peg 28
14th Dave ( Red Leader) 3-14 Peg 1
Well done to all the framers and section winners. I also managed to pick up a few beers and a couple of bags of pellets as a raffle prize as an added bonus.
I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed the day, the event is about having a laugh and a bit of a sing song where needed. The sound of Pete singing Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas" will haunt me all over the festive period. Dave turning a perfectly good method rod into a swingtip rod when a wand was a more suitable tool. Trevor, fishing the waggler and striking as if he was Zorro, Barry, starting to pack up and his tip goes round. Too many to mention.
I was lucky enough to nick another of Mick's shiny new pound coins making the season score.14-6. I am sure he will be gunning for me next year.
With thanks to Peter Morton for use of his photographs from the day.
