Today was my first match of the Marsh AC season, the earlier dates were cancelled due to fisheries being closed at the time. Our first chance to get out as a club was at Puddledock Farm. Again restrictions were put in place to ensure ours and everyone else's safety. We had pegs 1-30 for our 15 anglers, pegging just odd numbers meant everyone had a spare peg either side of them. I arranged to follow Mick to the fishery in separate cars, again following social distancing rules. On arrival, Dave was already in motion, collecting monies and drawing from pre-prepared pegs. Mick's luck continued drawing the end peg on the match length, whilst I had to settle for peg 11, ironically next to where I drew the last time I was there. John had arrived with his new motabilty scooter complete with trailer, to carry his gear to his peg, however, the weight was not something he had considered and it hardly moved before falling apart. Tony also had a new electric trolley from a converted wheelchair.
I had Gino and Josh to my left and Clive and Chris T to my right hand side. I have started making up a few floats over the lockdowm, certainly not of the standard of the professionals who make their own bodies. I am just gluing a few parts together for what I think I need. I planned to use these today and see how strong they are. A couple of margin floats, for both near and far banks at 12.5m, a .4 diamond for 5m line. Biggest issue I had was elastics, rarely using black or white hydro for this style of fishing. I settled on both. setting up identical rigs for across, one on white the other black. The 5m line was on green KND and black.
At the all in I started of across feeding 4mm pellets via a toss pot and fishing a 6mm hard pellet in a band. A few dips before foul hooking and pulling out of a small carp. Same thing on the next two bites. A switch to white hydro seemed to work and a 3lb carp was in the net. I was already behind the game with both Josh and Chris netting fish. Plodding away over the first hour saw odd carp come my way, but I was losing more fish than I was landing. I would either pull out at the net or lose them shipping back, I am getting a feeling of trying to rush the process and need to slow down a bit.
A move to the 5m line saw a few fish on meat, soaked in So Simple's Banions Juice. Again feeding via a toss pot seemed to be better than throwing by hand. Nicking odd fish before again suffering lost fish.
I felt that I was way behind Chris who was now fishing across to the far bank and still putting fish in the net. Josh had slowed but was still a threat, with Clive catching in the nearside margins on 8mm pellet to go with a few fish on the method. Gino was struggling, the method to the far bank was not working and he had resulted to catching a few silvers.
It was a case of head down and try to curb my enthusiasm, focusing on landing what I could, but by rotating lines I kept bites and odd fish coming throughout the day.
At the all out I felt I had done alright, a bit ring rusty and need to sort out elastics, once and for all.
The weigh in was also well done with social distancing in mind. We had a plastic plasterers bucket with a large landing net frame placed inside to keep the bucket open.
The angler would placed the fish in the bucket, step away and the weighing in person (Kyle) would perform the weigh in, calling out to the boards man ( Me). The same process worked from the other end of the match length with Josh and Tony working together as a team.
1st Chris Thomas 129-08 Section Winner
2nd Keith Ashby 72-12 Section Winner
3rd Dave Collier 61-12
4th Clive Pritchard 56-00
5th Josh Donovan 52-14
6th Mark Fox 39-08 Section Winner
7th Kyle Deane 38-08
8th Simon Watkins 38-00
9th Mick Wright 36-12
10th John Holdsworth 32-08
11th Tony Roberts 26-08
12th Jim Boase 14-00
13th Gino Exell 13-10
14th Chris Withall 11-14
15th Terry Goff 9-04
A hand sanitised MK Nugget was passed over, making it Keith 3 Mick 0 so far. Well done to Chris on winning, an ideal way to start the defence of the Marsh league. Also to Mark Fox on the far section win. A few more fish here and there would have made a big difference to the scores. Social distancing seemed to have worked within the guidelines and was good to fish a match again.
