We’d fished this venue – the T&M at Wolseley bridge a couple of years back on a MrV grueller promotion. It had been ‘difficult’ then, but we’d all had a few fish. Surely it would be ‘better’ today, with the advent of spring setting and no overnight frost to greet us - wouldn’t it?
19 members and two guests with obvious masochistic tendencies who seem to relish doing battle with the ‘curse’
were ‘up for it’. Just changing tack slightly at this point, despite us being in the digital age, it’s obviously not all it’s supposedly cracked up to be me thinks. 
Rewind 72 hours earlier and MrV had decided to swap sections due to the no of moored boats on the original venue. As a result, this entailed me to have to send out 19 texts and an email or two to the members to alert them of this. Some members courteously acknowledged receipt of these communications – thanks guys, you know who you are
– but others didn’t. ::) As they also didn’t show up for the match I can only assume that my efforts to contact them failed and they turned up at the wrong venue............so much for that digital age. Anyway back to the fishing.............or lack of it.
MrV had ‘sorted out’ parking for most of us in the wood – cheers MrV 
and on arrival with new travelling companion PhilB, he was also out trotting the towpath with Tricast pegging out. Meanwhile Big Baz was relieving the members of a few more bob with his superpool and card to raise funds for the fur and feather match at the end of the season.MrV & Tricast returned and advised Pegs 1 – 15 had gone in ‘east’ of the A51 with the others the west of the bridge. I secretly fancied one of those west ones, just for variety really, never ever having fished that section.
But it wasn’t to be as the draw progressed and I found myself on peg 14 two away from Cotti on the golden peg. Big Col had fished the section the day before – not a million miles away from where I was and reported he’d only done a 1lb plus of bits.
So the plan was to scrat out what I could with an initial 2lb target weight...........anymore would be a bonus........whilst fully expecting the match to be won in either the ‘low’ numbers as these pegs had coughed up a few in our grueller the other year, or from the ‘unknown’ high numbers.......I certainly didn’t fancy my peg – perhaps it used to be a feature peg a few years back before some ruthless lopping had taken place
For company I’d got Bullah to my left...........
And Choppymaster to my right
The off and lines are fed. Cotti on the golden peg is first to avoid the dreaded DNW of the anglers in view. Now I wonder what he had that roach on.
No sign of fish for any of us other until after 15 mins I snare a small silver with bite no 1.
Choppymaster turns up the heat and snares a silver and a gonk to take the lead, whilst Bullah persisted on the chop.I thought I’d pulled level with Choppymaster on the hour mark with bite no 2 that snared a gonk.......... but then I learnt he’d got 4
A few more bits were wheedled out in the next two hours but it was rock hard, apart from two bites in two put in......but then it was back to a stationary float, irrespective of which line I tried.
After 3 hours Mike E trotted down to stretch his legs.............he was fairing even worse with only one gonk to show for his efforts. But he was full of confidence as he returned to his peg, convinced he was gunna have a bonus fish or two.
And low and behold, within 10 mins he was seen playing one and successfully netted a bonus lb kinver tiger to wipe us all out.
By now, Bullah to my left was also putting me under pressure as he’d finally managed to snatch two small kinvers on his chop. I hadn’t a clue where my next bite was coming from when choppymaster put me to the sword and snared a ‘netter’ kinver tiger as well.
I’d fed, and tried the chop periodically, but hadn’t had a touch on it. So I upped the feed a tad and realizing that I wasn’t going to trouble ‘the leaders’ with a handful of gonks, decided to drag a worm about for the last hour and half.
And the rest is history, as all that dragging around finally resulted in one solitary bite
............time marched on and it got progressively colder and was I pleased to hear PhilB blow up, despite having drawn the scales today.Soon packed up and off I trotted with Choppymaster with the beamies. This is what we recorded as the weather decided to damp us down to boot.......
PEG
1 TRICAST62 0 - 13 - 6
2 JOSH 1 . 5. 4
3 BIG COL 1 . 6 . 9
4 MR V 0 - 9 - 12
5 ZORRO 0 - 9 - 10
6 DAZ W D N W
7 TAVERN CHAMP D N W
8 YAMO 0 - 3 - 0
9 OBI D N W
10 BIG BAZ 0 - 6 - 4
11 MIKE E 1 . 1 . 0
12 COTTI 0 - 2 - 13
13 CHOPPYMASTER 0 - 7 - 10
14 TK 2 . 1 . 14
15 BULLAH 1 . 3 . 5
16 PHIL B 0 - 6 - 5
17 HARRY911 0 - 7 - 10
18 BRAMBLES 0 - 1 - 6
19 KOD 0 - 10 - 6
20 KEITH F1 1 . 2 . 7
21 ROBERTO D 0 - 8 - 4
Well not a lot to add to a difficult day............apart from ta for the lift PhilB
and another special ta for Tricast for that unexpected generosity 
........or the gonks come to mention it 
