At approx 3.30pm Mark O trotted past me with his gear and said ‘Will you stop calling the matches TK Gruellers on the forums, because every match we fish turns out to be one. Can’t you call them the Mark Oakley Bagging series instead, then we might catch again ?’
Spose he’s got a point there………….I didn’t fish the last match which we’d moved to the cut at Wheaton Aston because of the frozen conditions. Everyone was gunna bag up……………….yep, heard it before.
On the day, half of the field, if not more, blanked on that one too. In fact I found it quite amusing when Sibeck subsequently posted elsewhere on these forums something along the lines of ‘I thought I was going on a Big Baz knock up, not another TK Grueller’
Anyway, rewind to 15 hours earlier……….
Walking home it’s cold, bloody cold. After a mild previous weekend, old Jack Frost has certainly put in another stern appearance. The ground is rock hard, the leaves on the deck are glinting silver and I reckon it’s -5c. Confirmed later by Big Baz that it was -7c in our neck of the woods. That’s two nights on the bounce………….sign there’s a Grueller next morning.
As I pull up the duvet, I have to check with JK whether the alarm clock still has a 7am setting on it………….it’s been that long since I’ve seen that time of day
It sure has and it only seems like 5 mins since I asked the question before I’m woken by some broadcaster giving us the news…………Downstairs I trot for a cup of rosy lee and get the soup on the hob for the flask.
Heinzer picks me up and we’re soon at the cut to be greeted by a lid on it again……….
‘WTF am I doing here?’ I think to myself. This despite seeing anglers on a small club match the previous weekend catching on Bills beloved bait
and Bezza reporting that he and Big Col had fished it mid week - w&j less - and had caught on ‘beastie’ rigs 
Overnight I’ve had a couple of casualties from what are probably far saner people than those that start to assemble. Thinking we are now 15 strong, that’s the no of pegs put in, with a possible option to ‘remove’ peg 4 which Big Baz has put in, but doesn’t fancy.
13 turn up for the draw, Shed Breaker was obviously still ‘out working’,
so 4 and end peg 15 are ditched.With everyone drawn, I’m left with peg 8. Now peg 8 is in an area that I’ve wanted to be many times
, but I can never seem to get near it. There are skimmers in the area, but will they show today? 
As I walk to the towpath to start the trot to my peg, I’m amazed to see a small boat coming along, cracking it’s way through.
A good thing or a bad thing? The general consensus speaking to a few cut cracks is ‘negative’, you always struggle if a boat ‘breaks it for you’. So perhaps not a good omen.
Worse still as it just passes my peg, it conks out…………
then slowly reverses back to Cotti on peg 7.
Meanwhile Terry Turnip gazes at the cut with another ‘WTF am I doing here’ expression
The boat remained stationary for 5 mins, before being able to proceed on it’s journey through my peg again.
I actually expected it to return to it’s moorings at some stage of the day, but it never did. In fact speaking to Storming Norman yesterday, he told me it had conked out on the Common of our canal on the Wyrley & Essington.
Back to the ‘match’. Sibeck had kindly slung his 15lb sledgehammer head a few times in my peg to clear me a bit more of an opening - ta mate -
all I had to do was ‘clear’ the ice out.That done I set up 3 rigs to cover up and down the shelves and the track.
The off. I knew it was going to be ‘hard’ so I’d made my mind up to sit on the punch. I still expected to snare a few bits early on and hopefully a skimmer or two might put in an appearance somewhere along the way. Well that was the plan………but after an hour I hadn’t had a touch.
In fact Big Baz was on walkabouts………….his Russian wasn’t working either and it appeared that MrV was ‘walking it’ as the only person with a fish - a solitary gudgeon. Plan A out of the window, but to be resumed later……….I moved to plan B and set up a 4th rig to drag a bit of choppie about to hopefully snare a kinver tiger or two.
Now I’ve a bit of a confession here.
At 1.10pm, with the float dotted right down, I did have an indication. There was a slight lift…………..as it dipped back down I expected it to sail out of sight…………….but it didn’t and that was my last bit of action for the day. 
Bezza paid us a visit halfway through too………he’d wheedled a few bit’s out on a thumb nail of joker ‘costing less than 10 pence’ and looked like he was walking it, although Blues4eva, who finished up with 11 samples appeared to be pushing him hard.
Although all this lack of inactivity wasn’t good publicity for the cut, I actually did sell a few season tickets to ‘new members’ who popped along to see how we were getting on
Anyway 10 mins before the scheduled end I decided that bit of chop wasn’t going to produce today and I called it a day for myself and decided to pack up. :(
Anyway……………….the moment you’ve all been patiently and excitedly waiting for - the tale (or lack of it) of the scales
1 HEINZER 0.11
2 KOD 0.6
3 BLUES4EVA 2.11
4
5 BEZZA 5.12
6 SIBECK DNW
7 COTTI DNW
8 TK DNW
9 TERRY TURNIP DNW
10 BIG BAZ DNW
11 MRV 1.1
12 MARK O 1.2
13 BIG COL 0.4
14 DEAD PEG 2.9
15
Roll on a fortnight to the next ‘Mark Oakley Bagging Match’
a week on Saturday…………..venue TBC 
