Well here goes………………..
Must say at the off, this wasn’t a match or a venue I was honestly looking forward too.
I’d heard such positive reports of the place and it’s name had conjured up images of some ‘country estate’ pool prior to booking the venue.
Sadly these had been dashed with the passage of time with reports of tight pegging followed by a view of google earth.
In fact, if Heinzer hadn’t suggested taking me earlier in the week, I’d had probably given this one a wide berth and fished the Vineyards the following day with SS & Co instead.
Ah well, lets give it a go……….. Heavy feeding – well heavy in my books
– was the norm on there supposedly so I was armed with 4 kilo of corn, a couple of cubed tins of meat, each prepared differently and ½ pint of mags ‘to get out of jail’. Surely this venue must favour ‘Lasher’ and ‘Ball it in Baker’ I thought :-/
Talk the night before was of where to draw, or not to. Simple Simon had indicated a few decent pegs. A check on the prevailing winds and I nailed my colours to the mast with a statement I didn’t want to draw the southern (bottom) end of the pool.
On arrival I was greeted with a fairly stiff breeze, blowing in the direction I suspected.
KOD had arrived early as is usual, and his first role was to kick off 3 pleasure anglers who obviously couldn’t have been bothered to read the notice board advising that there was a match on the pool.
He’d also done a first pass with the pegging, putting 20 in. Noticing Tommy Cooper had arrived with HaHa, which would make expected numbers up to 20 minimum, and fearing the potential for another missing member to turn up, the pegs were re-gigged and another slotted in. In hindsight what a cock up we made of that KOD :-[
.
Draw time. Dipping in half way through, a disc stuck to my fingers. Mistake no 4 of the day, instead of adopting my newly found drawing technique of discarding the first disc, and pulling another, I pulled the original out. Peg 20 – exactly where I didn’t want to draw. :(
Sod it, just get on with it.
Set up 3 rigs, really expecting only 2 to be used. These were for the margins which would also double as an up in the water rig, and at 4/5 mtrs. A ‘deeper’ rig for at about 7 mtrs just in case they backed off was the 3rd.
The owner then paid a visit taking breakfast orders. It only appeared I took up the offer. Must say, that a sausage on toast and a bacon sarnie at £1 a piece were both good value and good fare.
This was followed by ‘bad’ news. The owner, a very pleasant, inoffensive and quietly spoken gentleman advised that all fish over 5lb must be weighed in and released because ‘we don’t want big fish in keep nets’, plus …………we had to stop halfway through the match and weigh in and empty our nets!!!!!
Whilst we had wind of the possible need to weigh fish over 5lb from SS on an earlier posting, weighing half way through was a ‘ya wat???? (!!!).
As an organiser here’s my little rant coming up………..and this applies to most commercials we visit. Places are booked and rules received. The number of times there is a change to rules post booking, or some other unpublicised rules manifest themselves on the morning and are imposed on the club really irritates me. >:(
If places don’t want 5lb fish in nets, either don’t stock em (or remove them as they grow on and place in ‘specimen pools’) or don’t hold matches on the pool. Is my view too simplistic, out of order or what? Answers on a postcard.
Don’t forget, we even fished a place a few years back where a 3lb rule applied, but the rule was only mentioned on the morning we fished!!!!!!
Well rant over…………..
The next 5 hours were pretty uneventful apart from…………
Some members struggled to catch a solitary fish and Ball it in Baker dry netted off the oak tree peg. Even KOD only got out of jail in the last 20 mins with his solitary offering off golden peg 17.
The eventual winner took full advantage of a couple of spare pegs between himself and Ball it In to take most of the field apart………..well done that man
Big Geoff put down his baited top three whilst apparently using or going to use his cupping kit………..
and paid the penalty as it sailed off to the middle of the pool and hogged the mini island.
Further mishap happened a little later when one of his kits also snapped whilst playing a fish and was dragged off too.
To compound matters, reports were received that he also stood on another section following this commotion. :o
As for me, a quiet match in the bottom left hand side of the pool with 6 of us – Mick Kenn, myself, Cotti, Tigerbay, KOD and Lasher spread across only 8 pegs slabs.
8 fish from about a dozen bites hardly kept me enthralled……………and I really thought I was way down the list with a serious big bomb out, but the area I originally wanted to draw had fished ‘hard’ too.
Did I cock the peg up? Possibly. I’ve never fed so much on a match………using 3 kilo of corn. But there again, I heard tales after the match that 2 anglers who beat me used (or had) 3 kilo of worm and 6 pints of caster amongst their armoury.
Did pegging and the number fishing influence things? Most certainly, but I’ve fished ‘tighter’ places before. We could have had some visitors after all………..might as well and all of us could have been nice and ‘cosier’ :D
Two hours into the match and Cotti to my left was doing me 4 fish to 2. ‘Don’t you wish you were up the cut Cotti?’ ‘No’ was his retort. The same question at the end of the match received a different answer………...
As I said earlier, 1 Drynet, 4 anglers having 1 fish only with another just the 2.
The 5 packets of secretly sprinkled
had done the business again………..
The moment you’ve all been waiting for (or not)
1 HaHa 57.10.00 Peg 15
2 Worminator 47.12.00 Peg 1
3 Big Geoff 41.01.00 Peg 4
4 Rolly 30.03.00 Peg 6
5 Zorro 29.12.00 Peg 2
6 TK 29.06.00 Peg 20
Others
Lasher 21.12.00
Heinzer 19.10.00
Tigerbay 18.07.00
Cotti 15.12.00
Yamo 14.04.00
Veste 10lb odd
Gez 7lb odd
KOD 04.08.00
MGB 03.00.00
Sorry Brambles, but MGB daint post me your weight
