Think again Mr Mark.
Match 2.. on the Oxford Canal at Claydon, just over the border into Northamptonshire, going from Coventry, middle of nowhere.
Promising venue, except when we turn up.
Coming out of winter I knew it'd be hard. I fully expected to feed very little and search for odd fish, unless say, the punch went.
My usual rule thumb is get up at 6, out by 7, draw at 8. This seems to work for most of our matches, except today. Retiring for the night, confident i'd just about got everything prepared, I was easily settled. Just the one note to self in the morning, 'don't forget the bread punches', just had to seek them out as I wasn't sure which of my two boxes they were in.
Couldn't find 'em. Panic set in and I was gonna be late ! I could see my 'be better prepared' promise to self going out the window pretty early !
As the porridge went down and the cogs whirled, I dismantled a couple of biros to make use of the casings and added an old no1 section and a file. I'd have to make some up on the bank, somehow. Didn't want to waste all that sieved punch crumb / liquidised bread i'd made up the night before.
On arrival, in the nick of time, with most of the parking gone, i'd never seen so much water in a cut. The colour of hot chocolate and in places with the water level flush with the bank. Didn't look like punch conditions to me at all.
Pegger out Geoff had done a great job spacing out the pegs a decent distance but said he'd only gone one side of the bridge due to the amount of thorns on the hedge/bank and a lot of the lads had got pneumatic tyres. You know, thats something i've never thought of before.
Anyway I drew peg 1, to much hilarity due to it being the longest walk and me being the one to advocate spacing the pegs out. No matter, keen as mustard
.Forty yards in and I just managed to stop Harry doing a kindly deed and pull the thorned branch out of my wheel. It's still in there, slung in the garage for now, no doubt acting as a plug.
Arrives at end peg, decides to ditch the punch idea and basicsally fed three lines for now, one at 4m and two down the centre, very lightly with chopped worm mush in a dropper. Very confident of snaring a Kinver Tiger or two.
Nowt. Then the storm started. Now I don't mind winter fishing, in the snow, but this was not supposed to happen. Forecast had been good all week. But it crept up on us. Before long you couldn't see my holdall for snow and sleet.
With no wind it began to settle on top of the cut making it very difficult to get a bait through. Something i'd not experienced before with snow.
Two hours in and biteless I decided to grab a coffee from the flask and walk a few yards to get the circulation going and the fingers working again.
No more than a few yards gone and somone was calling me. Thought they were going to have a conflab about the end time, or call it off. But oh no, not thinking i'd got up with my brolly still attached to my box and that object I could see in the cut was the top half of my brolly, box tipped cutwards, draws open !
Don't know how many rigs are in the depths or what else has gone in. Rescued as much as I could with me landing net and out of the grass. We'll see. For now, it's slung in the garage till I can face it lol.
At that I decided to pack up, and i'm not normally one for that. A few minutes later and the whistle went to put an end to the proceedings of thirteen biteless anglers.
It was no fun at all packing up, pole sections were shoved inside each other full of sleet and snow. Everything thing else seemed to be made of wet metal.
So there you have a proper grueller if ever there was one.
Did I say last time, the only way was up
Still plenty of camaraderie on the way back along the towpath, helping others with their trolleys navigate the treacherous bank and snowballs in the car park t'boot.
C'moooon ... bring on the next one
Some pics...
Water level
My peg before the off
Into the match
A bit further in
Wreckage after the mighty Booshing
LOL
... 
