Low and behold, Crafty Tafty must have a dip into this part of the forum on occasions, cuss he sent me a pm suggesting a fishery that I wasn’t aware of up in his ‘neck of the woods’ – Longford. Whilst he did accede that the winner would have water pigs, there were plenty of silvers in there to keep everyone ‘occupied’.
Sounded good to me...........so I booked it.
Come the day of the match – the alarm clock went off and I couldn’t believe I’d let Heinzer talk me into an ‘early’ departure
............especially as I’d imbibed a fair few pints of Banks the day/evening before giving me dad a good send off as it was his funeral 24 hours earlier.I was armed with a ‘load of info’ from Crafty who’d even gone to some extreme lengths to ensure I’d got pucka, up to date info on Lily Pool – ta Crafty
Come the draw – after a mega bacon butty at the onsite cafe that warrants a mention
– I found myself on our peg 13(perm 14) – was that an omen of things to come? 
For company I’d got Cockadoodledoo almost opposite me and Tricast62 to my right – at least if things were a bit quiet over the next 5 hours I could have a bit of good banter. 
Without realising it, I must have inadvertently been ‘up for it’
– despite the total lack of preparation on my part. Cotti as usual had furnished me on the bank with my normal cormorant flavoured gentiles as for some bizarre reason I set up 5 rigs............ 
The off and I set about feeding 7 lines
and then set about letting them ‘settle’ whilst I had a look on a 3mtr to hand silvers rig.First put in and it buried
Dry un off – a roach was swung in – only problem was it was in the 80 to the lb stamp. Ah well – lets see if I can put 4lb of bits together I thought to myself.
TBH I couldn’t see a lot from my peg so just decided to get me head down.......
But like a plonker an hour or so in on fish 47 I wasted 30 or was it 40 minutes – dunno
– playing (or being played by) a double figure water pig. After a couple of fags I was getting a bit impatient and started ‘bullying it a bit’ on that silvers rig. 
I doubted it would fit in my landing net when I saw it as it was tiring a bit, but shoving another section on cuss of the amount of lackie I’d got pulled out my no2 went ping.
Grabbing the lackie and trying to ‘hand line’ it, I did what I should have done in the first minute of the ‘battle’ ::) – parted company on the hook.
Fortunately I’d kept feeding that silvers line, and with a new hook attached, was pleased to find ‘me little babies’ were still there.
And so it came to pass – 4 of those 5 rigs never saw the water and 6 of those lines were never tried ........just ‘did me own thing’ – whilst keeping an eye on Cockadoodledoo and Tricast62 who seemed to be putting me to the sword with some ‘stampers’ The whistle went and time to pack up and wait for the scales...............those that had weighed in wondered back past with reports of some decent weights – well in excess of the 10lb I was hoping I might scrape together.
Ah well, down the pan again, but it had been a decent day.And the tale of the scales..........
PEG
1 CARLOS 19.14.0
2 BLUES4EVA 12.6.0
3 RICH C 20.2.0
4 GEOF C 8.10.0
5 BRAMBLES 3.0.0
6 PHIL B 1.12.0
7 OBI 11.8.0 Golden Peg
8 HARRY THE HITMAN DNW
9 TOMMY COOPER DNW
10 BIG BAZ 23.4.0
11 HAHA 20.6.0
12 COCKADOODLEDOO 8.15.0
13 TK 23.12.0
14 TRICAST62 12.6.0
15 YAMO 34.0.0
16 COTTI 8.4.0
17 MR V 18.6.0
18 MIKE E 9.0.0
19 KOD 27.12.0
20 BIG COL 18.2.0
21 THE MILKY BAR KID 3.0.0
22 HEINZER 13.0.0
23 ROBERTO 7.12.0
24 ZORRO 21.10.0
25 DAZ W 17.6.0
The verdict?
We’ll be back. Well I would say that wouldn’t I?
Seriously though – I never heard a ‘complaint’ from our members. Longford is a tidy fishery with the minimum of rules – one where we were left ‘alone’ and trusted to abide to those few rules
And as for the onsite Cafe !!!! You won’t beat the bacon baps there – there was half a pig on mine !!!
A big thumbs up from me – ta again Crafty Tafty for tipping me the wink about it
