part six...

Bad weather has continued to plague the first matches of our new club season a situation we are by now getting thoroughly sick of.

SEVERN'S UP!
You want to know how bad our luck is with the weather, I’ll tell you how bad our luck is and our unenviable record of having booked matches through the worse weather that can be imagined.

So this is what the Severn looks like!

In 1996 we booked a match on the Quarry section of the River Severn in Shrewsbury. Well each year we have called Mr. Robson at Sundorne Tackle in Shrewsbury the week before the match, only to be informed that the matches have been cancelled due to the near perennial flooding that now affects this river. Each time we rebook the match full of hope, for a date the following year, only to have to do the same for the next date. Over the years I seem to have become a firm family friend of the match secretary at Shrewsbury due to these frequent phone calls to rearrange the matches, so much so that I was asked to give away his daughter at her wedding last year, (well, OK, I made that one up). However we can’t believe that it has taken 5 years to fish that match and I don’t think they can either. We now have the original match permit framed on the wall of the Match Secetaries lounge.

Since we booked the match fees have gone up so much that they made a loss of £10, 6 shillings and 8 old pence on what we paid them. (OK that one as well, everything else is true, honest, crossing fingers behind back).

This year we finally managed to fish it. Five years, it wasn’t worth the wait. The whole of the week preceding the match was freezing cold rather than the more usual torrential rain, so much so that I had to call my, by now, best friend to see if the river had frozen. I could see in my minds eye the effect that a complete week of -9°C nights could have on the venue with wagglers bouncing off the surface of the frozen river. Fortunately it warmed up for the day of the match.

Snow Business Like Shrew’ Business
Have you ever heard the expression, it’s too cold to snow. What utter rubbish. Ever heard of snow in the Sahara or in Death Valley, well no, I didn’t believe that it could ever be too cold to snow, but as the thermometer rose to the dizzy heights of the positive numbers that morning, down it came.

We had 3 inches fall during the one hour drive to the venue so it was no real surprise when it didn’t fish very well despite the water colour looking emerald green, sock on!

I drew a peg that I had fished previously on a pleasure session about 8 years ago, (possibly the last time that the venue wasn’t flooded) an occasion when I was rudely interrupted from catching small roach and dace on my wife's new waggler rod by a rather large pike.

Don’t you buy 'her indoors' a new rod every now and then? You bring it home, ‘Look love, see what I’ve bought you’. No it does work with me either. However if you have to endure the physical pain that follows I suggest that to make it worthwhile and it should always coincide with your decision to buy yourself one.

Make It Snappy
Upon first hooking this beast I thought it was a barbel, then changed my mind, no a salmon! Then when I finally saw the mouth and the spots down its back my heart sank as I realised I would have to put my hands close to the jaws of this predatory carnivore. (If you look closely at the photo you will be able to see my thumb turn white as I clamped it’s mouth shut, that's how frightened I was of it).

Fortunately I had two pieces of good luck that day. One, I didn’t have to consider touching it for over 1 hour 40 minutes, the time it eventually took to land it as I only had 1lb 4oz Drennan Double Strength hooklength to a Kamasan 22 on the ‘sharp’ end, and secondly, I had my good pal Jerry with me who as a diversion to his normal carp fishing actually likes to catch these things and it was he who helped me to fold it up into the teeny landing net, that us matchmen like to carry around with us, and drag it up the bank.

Beauty and the beast?

The thirteen pounds that the beast weighed would disappointingly have won our little match six times over. It must have been merely good luck that I drew where I wanted and sneaked out just over the two pounds that was needed to win that day. Well OK I have won another club match from one peg above before and that was on the weekend that the Shrewsbury v Liverpool FA Cup match was called off round the corner due to a frozen pitch, so I’d had the benefit of fishing it on a rock hard day then as well.

I love fishing on this river, I just sometimes wonder why?

Not A Lot Of Lolly
Our next match was on the River Weaver, also known as the Wraver, (see Wirrals Way 5) at Winsford, the rain that has affected us all for what seems to be the whole of the last year had it’s effect on this match too. This normally benign river was belting through that even a much in vogue 4gm lollipop float was not man enough for the current mid-river.

This match saw me draw the 'Golden Peg' for only the second time ever, The only other occasion had been the first time we had started the GP when it was worth a whole £15. This was the second match of the year, and only the second since we blew the previous years pot during the presentation night, so once again it was only worth thrupence ha’penny.

I found during the match that despite getting a couple of fish out on the ‘lolly’ that the best line of attack was down the edge with the whip that was rather too short and in retrospect I would have been better running a stick down that line instead. No one else within sight was catching particularly well and the grapevine suggested it was hard all over the match length. Dave (Gums) Roberts below me was catching smaller stuff down the inside on what turned out to be maggot and pinkie. It turned out that the only reason he was fishing the pinkie is that he came down to my peg whilst I was tackling up and saw 1/2 pint of the fluoro little ones on my bait tray. What he didn’t know was that I'd scalded a handful of them and put them into my continental style initial barrage for the mid river line. In order to ensure the mix would hit bottom in the raging flow I put a kilo of sand and cement into the half a bag of Matchblend along with some caster, hemp and the pinkies.

I started to catch steadily on caster, feeding that and hemp until the last half hour when I trashed a rig on a snag at the bottom of the run. I had to quickly find another in the box which at 1.75gm was still .25gm too light for the flow. The depth on this line was 4 or 5ft. I told you it was belting through didn’t I.

Broken Heart
I started catching again but slower, as I now didn’t have the control that I had had before, until I hooked the first rig that had lost. I pulled for a break as only the hook length should have gone but at the last moment it came free catapulting my rig up the tree above me. I walked up the bank and pulled again for a break this time from the topmost branch of the tree.

Then the whistle went. A complete waste of 1/2 an hour.

During this half hour Dave next to me had a 10oz roach and with the last cast of the day had a perch, somewhere over the pound, and a bit to make things really interesting (for him but not me).


The perch had more teeth than Dave!

The scales came round and with most only having a couple of pounds I felt quite good, that was until Dave weighed 2oz more than my 5lb 7oz. That last half hour, together with his roach and perch robbed me of the GP money. His smile was so wide that his tooth free gums glinted in the watery late winter sunshine.

Bordering On Lunacy
As I had a win and a second in the Matchman of the Year competition at that time I felt that a little bit of a look at the next venue was called for which was intended to be the Meridian Lake on Border Fisheries. I had only once fished this perfectly circular and uniform venue before and on that day I had been in the middle of 26 blanks (come to think about it the cold night had frozen all the other canals and lakes around the area that day and the ice had only been kept off the venue due to the aerators being left on, so we have yet another example of how we seem only to ever fish when the weather it is at it’s worst).

I called Mick, the owner, to see if there were any matches that week to avoid and he greeted me with the news that Rick had ballsed up the booking. We were meant to be sharing the match with another local club, however Rick assumed that they were to have their match on the Saturday, like us. However they have matches on Sundays and we couldn’t have that lake on Saturday due to their regular ‘Polemania’ opens. We had been moved to the original match lake, which wasn’t too disappointing as I had some knowledge of that lake from a pervious Winter League on it. However I seemed to remember that those matches could be hard as nails as well, at times fishing the bomb all match. You know those sorts of matches where you only need 3 pinkies for bait, 1 for the hook and 2 to loose feed.

The day I took off was a perfect warming early spring day and after a quick chat to the local venue expert sat myself down on a peg that would have given a little bit for everything, so as to get a taster for the match that weekend.

The practice went like they all do and I caught fish on the tip from the off and then steadily all through the day, even having 5 carp in 1/2 hr at the end, on the pole.

All sorted, or so I thought until we came to Saturday. On the journey down we had intermittent snow flurries and a solid sheet of white covered the low hills in the distance. Gone was the tee-shirt weather of Thursday, the wind was bitter enough to freeze exposed hands and we were back into Winter again.

Micks Mix Up?
We arrived and from the size of the wink that I got from Mick suggested that he was about to wind poor Rick up. With a poker straight face Mick asked in a surprised manner just why had Rick had turned up that day and not the following Saturday. He was full, or so he told Rick and he strung him along for probably 5 minutes discussing the mid-week telephone conversation and who had got the wrong day. Rick seemed more and more concerned as Mick suggested that he could squeeze a couple in here and the odd one there to get everyone on a peg for the day. Finally Mick could carry on no more, probably due to the sight of half the club rolling around on the grass outside slapping themselves in a vain effort to calm down as they fought to contain themselves.

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
Draw done in the cafe over a full breakfast and I’m second last to draw. Of the last two pegs on the bag, one is only one peg away from where I practised. I picked the right one and Rick got what was left.

Rick knew along with everyone else that I had been for a bit of a practice so was quite keen to find out what I had learnt. I had been thoroughly coached in the Don Parkinson School of ‘economy with the truth’ so was on my guard to prevent unnecessary info being divulged. What I couldn’t tell them was that I had caught well on the pole as that, if it worked, would be the winning method for my peg and also because I had been told that it would only work on the three or four pegs in my area, so it wouldn’t have helped if I had. Keen to obtain any info about the likely methods that I would obtain he came for a look at the old bait tray shortly before the all in to see what I’d got lined up. There on the tray was 1/2 pint of casters. Damn, I haven’t brought any, he told me. Knowing that they hadn’t done much good on the tip line in the practice when he asked if I had any spare I generously allowed him to take the two day old ones I’d had since Thursday. On the way back he begged a handful of meat from Dave ‘look no teeth’ Roberts. I smiled inwardly as he returned to is peg. They’ll be no good to you today, I thought as I knew it may not fish as well as Thursday but if it was just slower going I felt that I would have gained some benefit from the day. In any case I’d had a good days fishing even if the match didn’t fish so well.

Cap That
It didn’t. Bites were at a premium and the fish tightly shoaled to to extent that three pegs in a row got first, second and third. Rick had been left with a peg right in the middle of those three and walked the match with over 11lb whilst everyone other than the framers struggled for only a pound or so. He didn’t need the 'borrowed' bait, he caught steadily on maggot and corn, just as I had two days previously. I didn’t mind too much, you can’t draw well all the time, unless your name is Don Parkinson. (or so we tell him.) What I did mind was that we had previously entered the Angling Times Clubman competition and religiously sent in the results each week for publication and after a while we let it slip and stopped doing it. However all this changes when the Match Sec wins a match and sure enough the following weeks top 25 cap winner was Mr Rick Keeley for his tremendous catch of carp, chub and rudd from Border Fishery. I have lost count of the weeks that I have checked the column without once seeing our club name, then all of a sudden out of the blue there it is.

Rick still claims that he sends them in every week and they never print our results... until it comes to a match he'd won. I’ll let you make up your own minds on this one. Suffice to say, if that cap lasts out the year, I’ll be surprised.

The next two matches to come were at Offas Dyke. The first of which had been meant to be on the Trent and Mersey Canal at Billinge which had been closed due to the Foot and Mouth outbreak. Our fall back venue was brought into ‘action’ which again wasn’t necessarily how you would describe the fishing.

Magic Circle?
Don was first and drew peg 31, a noted flier, (again) and in addition pulled the GP which caused the rest of us to consider going home. That was now three club matches in a row that he has picked either that or p24 (the other flier), in addition to which this year he has picked p31 in a short Rover, knock up after one of our work parties and again when fishing as a guest of another local club who were visiting our water. We don’t know quite how he does it but in the absence of a supernatural explanation or allegations that Don has superglued ball 31 permanently to his finger tips we have now expanded the enquiry and are currently investigating the possibility of wide scale match fixing by bookmakers either on the Indian subcontinent or in Leicester.

I have long held the view that I should give up practising fishing for matches and just practice the draw instead. This theory has been further borne out by Jeremy Denton, a friend who has now fished a couple of Match Angling Plus events down at Gold Valley finishing third and first, and on both occasions drew peg 31 on Gold Lake. Perhaps it’s something to do with number 31. Where's my lottery ticket!

However, Dons fine display of angling skills, carefully putting together a good net of small roach, skimmers and crucians was destroyed by the capture of a large carp and a few bits by Richie Arneux from Island peg 20.

As previously suggested the weather had to have an effect on this match in some way, which was readily displayed by the wind and rain blowing Dons brolly inside out and him finishing the match using one hand to hold the tattered side down around his left shoulder. I have never seen him give up before the end of a match before but ten minutes before the all out was sounded he begun packing away his sodden gear. Some things will never cease to amaze me.

So there ends another couple of matches with our little club. We have long suspected that we are jinxed by poor fishing and bad weather but in these last few matches we have had to endure freezing cold, copious amounts of snow, lashing rain and gale force winds. Roll on the Spring and Summer and some better weather. I bet the fishing doesn’t improve for us (much).