part seven...

The next (this time planned) Offas match was just two weeks after that reported in the last instalment when again Don picked out a flyer, not peg 31 yet again!!! No lightening cannot strike more than 5 times in a season, no Don this time picked peg 1, immediately next to peg 31, fishing to the same but the other side of the bush and lillies that provide the main catching zones as his current favourite 31. I have a sneaky suspicion that he now has the depths for these pegs permanently marked on his top sections.

Boot Hill ?
In addition to the continuing mystery surrounding Don's drawing arm, the match crew experienced another example of the paranormal, one even worthy of mention in the X-Files. This was the strange, near ethereal, presence of a lone pair of rigger boots abandoned beneath one of the trees adjacent to the car park. There was no signs of either the owner nor any swaying legs to be found dangling from the surrounding trees that you would normally only ever see on Inspector Morse or other such programmes. Rick suggested that we look in the boots to see if there were feet still in them. I am glad to report that there wasn't.

Neither was there any signs of scorching through the soles of the boots or any burnt patches on the ground close by, had there been there would be no need for Mulder and Scully. When presented with such conclusive evidence any one in the club would have realised that the mysterious circumstances surrounding the discovery of the rigger boots is simply and completely explained by the presence of our friend Russsell, an ex-member of the club, (no not dead yet) who famously had the misfortune (or ignorance) to walk across a damp field in murky cloudy weather with 11 metres of carbon pole over his shoulder, Dads Army style!

Have boots need rigger!

Flash in the Pan
He still claims to this day that he didn't see the 40 foot high pylon, you know the one with 24,000 volts pulsating and crackling through the attached cables, that he was shortly to walk beneath. I am told, and can believe it, that there was a loud bang and a flash so bright that three counties RNLI lifeboats, thinking they had seen a distress flare, took to sea as a result. This is the Russell who then wonders why he woke up in hospital, completely surrounded by physicians, ECG machines, wires and ventilators, with melted wellies, (which by all accounts were still smouldering), moulded glove like to his feet.

He now recounts, usually to groups of friends late at night, who will by now be nearly crying with laughter, how when unconscious he was aware of more jolts or 'bangs', as he describes them, to later on in his recovery, be told by the doctors that he shouldn't still be with us as his heart had stopped three times on the way to casualty and that the further bangs were probably them jump starting it. Apparently later in the day the ambulance men came to visit him and I am told that they don't normally visit the patients that they pick up but they needed proof for their own eyes that he had survived as they didn't really believe it. We now have a set of jump leads in our First Aid Kit.

An accident waiting for an excuse to happen
Russell must be the most accident prone person that has ever existed. If there is anyone worse I don't want to be found anywhere near them. I won't go into the details of how Russell fell on an electrified line in front of an express train whilst stationed in Germany, nor how he lost all his teeth during a fight or how he tried to catch a car falling off the jacks by putting his hand beneath the disc of the disc brakes, which subsequently pinned his hand to the ground and broke most of the bones in what was left beneath. Nor shall I tell you about the hooked barge on the Bridgwater canal which 'towed' him down the path of the same name by his 6lb. straight through, or how he was able to constantly brake expensive pole sections.

Divine saturation?
However there is one further tale about him which is worth recounting, just to give you a measure of the humour that he could inject into one of our matches.

Russell as you may imagine had a thing about falling in and it was not unusual to find him stripping off his clothes mid-match as a result of an unexpected dip, however during tackling up for one particular match , very early one morning, Don on the next peg looked across to see him in just his bib and brace folding his clothes up neatly in a pile next to his box on the bank. As this was rather early for even Russell to have fallen in, Don had to ask the reason for this behaviour he enquired, ‘Fallen in already Russ? No, this is for when I do!’ he replied!

Insider information!
After the draw had been completed Harry Beech generously offered advice to current league leader Richie as he had drawn the bridge peg 18, which according to Harry has a resident 7.5lb ghostie in it. I don’t think he needed much advice as he had won the previous match on this venue with a big lump off a peg on the island which is accessed by the self same bridge.

In this particular match within 90 minutes of the start three people, ‘Young’ Sonny Cooper, peg 13, Richie (again) and his travelling partner Dave Philips, peg 24, had all caught carp which meant if you weren’t on a really good silver fish peg you may as well sit out for carp as well. In fact Sonny had a carp on after only 5 minutes and lost it only to hook and land the next one a mere 10 minutes later. Dave went on to lose at least one carp an hour from his flier, before wrestling a couple in whilst Richie later added another carp to add to his first beast (that 7.5lb pet ghostie) later on in the match. I don’t think he took much notice of Harry’s advice and as a result won the match.

Steve Redgrave... no contest
I had to sit out for the carp fishing tight to the island at 16m. The strain of holding the pole at that length for three and a half hours nearly made me a cripple. However some light relief came as a result of the spookily realistic re-enactment of Kirk Douglas’s lead role in ‘The Vikings’ amply demonstrated by Brian ‘Valhalla’ Woodall. The necessity for this complex manoeuvre was due to a rather one sided altercation between him, a carp and a low branched tree. Thus the requirement for the boat to reunite himself with his top three. During which time he showed off his nautical skills by rowing out to the island, (thick end first) before disentangling his pole sections and rig, first from the branches and then the oars, before rowing back (sideways this time) and becoming reacquainted with terra firma (the more firma the less terra.)

"Olympic single sculls hopeful in serious bush collision"

Foot and Mouth
The last time anyone tried to get out of this poor excuse for a tin bath was when our work party manager Ron ‘the builder’, (‘can he fix it!’) tried in vain to rescue a sheep that had lived for three weeks unnoticed on one of the islands in the lake. On that occasion he got all the way out to the island before the sheep decided not to take the risk and swim for it, and he had to return back to our empty handed. (although I haven’t a clue how he would have got the sheep into the boat). He was then generously helped ashore by Keith, only to be thanked by Ron by smacking him in the mouth with an oar. I unfairly suggested at the time that it was a good job it didn’t hit him end on as he may have swallowed it.

Ultimately, again, Don's nice mixed bag was pipped by the couple of pegs that had managed to snare a stray carp or two. The same net-result as two weeks previously. This was beginning to seem like our ‘Groundhog Day’. Surely all I had to do was to wait around and Andie McDowell would turn up just for me ! (see the film if you really need to know, Ike and Tina Turner will never be the same again).

Hot ‘Point’ and Bust
My match, well the least said about that the better. Well whilst I was awaiting my mate ‘Andie’ to show up I managed to hook a very good fish just half an hour before the end that could have got me a frame place, and then promptly lost it on a tree root which caused the temporarily tethered carp to do an impression of a washing machine in the far side of my island point swim. I got loads of sympathy from all those who could see this event as you could imagine, ‘Oh no, have you lost it? Hard luck’... 'That's a pity isn’t it... It was a big one’ and all that sort of thing. I did console myself with the thought that I did as well as I could given, one, the peg had poor form for silver fish but did occasionally provide our more specimen oriented members with some good days, and two, points were unlikely to be important to me as I couldn’t fish enough matches in the year to give me a reasonable chance in the annual points trophy.

Did I tell you previously about my appalling drawing arm at this venue, well that was probably the time I had drawn crap peg 11, well my island point swim was the very same peg 11. I think we should take all the carp out or fill the place in and make a car park, a view not unreasonably shared by most of the other members. However if we did Don would only want space 31.

Hickory Hollow
Our next match was at Hickory Hollow at Whitchurch, Staffs. This was a venue that had a good reputation obviously up to the point when we got there. Large shoals of crucian carp and proper carp are the target here. Later in the day, neither Don or myself, pegged next to each other could buy a bite from anything, never mind the crucians or carp.

Wise before, during and after the event
I got the job of pegging out which wasn’t too hard even if there are no permanent pegs but as there seemed only enough pegs on the lake for the number going how could anyone go wrong. Well you always get the smart arse coming round half way through. ‘You haven’t put in the best pegs have you!’, he says pointing at two scruffy worn patches on the bank side, immediately in front of the path that everyone will walk down to get to the other lake, which would mean that anyone pegged there is in grave danger of having an old codger stumbling over £2,000 of pole, and even worse there was no gap in the bank side vegetation to either land any fish caught or put in a keep net. The other small matter was that these two pegs were in the same area that I and Don were desperately trying not to blank in. Smart arse!!!!

The lake itself is really two different parts of the same piece of water separated by a couple of intensely tree infested islands, well the ground is so low that the trees are the islands. The pegs around these are full of character and look completely fishy. Our bit was desolate by contrast. Merely a couple of shrubby stick like branches on the waters edge between pegs. The other end was close to the ‘island’ trees and had reed mace lining the banks.

Absence makes the wallet grow fatter?
As Rick had been conned into looking after a local tackle shop over the weekend whilst the owner had a few days fishing down at Docklow Pools, Keith ‘Napoleon’ Williamson had needed to beg a lift to the match from Ian Cook. However in the absence of his normal travelling partner Keith went on to draw the best looking peg on the lake. Not only did the peg have good form, as Don had won our last match on the venue off it several years before but in addition to that good fortune Keith drew the GP as well. Now the arrangement between Keith and Rick of splitting their winnings is well known amongst our club but even we were astonished to find that Rick had managed to convince Keith that this arrangement should still stand in his absence. Let me get this right, Rick doesn’t buy any bait, petrol or pay any of the pools but expects a split of the prize money, no I can’t work that on out either ?

Could this be Rick's lucky day ? Or would our curse of the Golden Peg strike again.

You don’t fish it like that
I couldn’t see Keith from where I was but judging by the fact he wasn’t noticed bank walking on reflection I must have realised he was doing OK. Later in the match others told us that he was getting a fish every put in, then, he’s got a carp, and all that time we still couldn’t buy a bite. ‘Did you know 50lb of crucians came off those pegs the day before yesterday!’ my unhelpful local informed me about the pegs at our end, with a note of perverted satisfaction in his voice. ‘Did you know you’re as welcome as Jasper Carrott at a Skoda convention.’ I wanted to say with more than a hint of malice in mine.

Toward the end we all started fishing ‘Offas type tactics’ for that ever hopeful one large carp, but even that wouldn’t have been good enough. Keith weighed early and set the pace with 14lb 12 ounces, most were admitting to nowhere near that. Next door Richie’s winning run with carp hadn’t ended, just the winning bit of the equation as he put 7 or 8lb on the scales made up nearly entirely of one fish. We all then proceeded to the next peg, occupied by Terry, ‘The Bull’ Bainbridge. We should have known what was to come from the odd dropped hints, the ‘I’ve no got that much.’ ‘Probably got half that’, ‘Only got small stuff, no decent fish’, you know the sort of thing.

Pipped at the post?
The needle swung round the dial of the scales for the second time, 12, 13, 14, 15, and then settled back to be just pipped by Keith’s bonus carp. He’d done well but not well enough. That late carp was the bonus Keith had needed. So it seemed that the GP had eventually gone. You couldn’t wipe the smile from his face with a sledgehammer.

Keith spent the rest of the tour around the lake on the weigh in, doing the, ‘well its not over yet’, bit, ‘the someone could pip me yet’, ‘Kenny’s had a few’, in the vain pretence that the result wasn’t now a forgone conclusion, when in reality he would have been mortified if anyone had even got close. By then all there was to weigh in was our lifeless end of the lake. This was despite a late carp from ‘Gnasher’ Roberts next to me and Don’s final throw of the dice fishing for silver fish in the margins in a desperate late bid for Championship points.

Linford the Carp
Now I can’t understand why he did this as a couple of ounces wouldn’t have changed things that much, but the beastie carp that snaffled his single pinkie, bottomed the number 3 elastic a whole 3 seconds later and smashed him to bits would have done!!!!!! Never mind, Hey Hoe!

His early departure, first seen at Offas Dyke in the last match, was again repeated amongst much cursing and knashing of teeth - Groundhogs again!


Don's obviously thrilled during the presentation of Keith's shield

Telephone Lines
Back at the draw Keith pocketed the £116 that the combination of pools and GP had given him. We all naturally wanted to congratulate him so we formed an orderly convoy, three cars ahead and two behind to ensure he didn’t forget the turn into the pub car park. It was unfortunate that poor Rick couldn’t join us so Ian, Keith's new driver and our resident DJ and entertainer, (available for weddings, presentations and the odd barmitzva's!) just had to ring him from his mobile to tell him the good news and the conversation went something like this.
‘Rick is that you. Busy are you?’
‘We’re in the pub’, ‘Are you coming down’.
‘The Golden Peg’s been won’
‘You won’t believe it, ...... no it was Keith.’
‘No it was Keith, ...... honest’, ‘ No, ........ I’m not joking’.
‘You’re going shares with him aren’t you?’
‘Good, cause you’ve each bought two rounds’.
‘Well one for winning the match and the other for the Golden Peg’.
‘ ...... no. no, we’ve already bought them.’, ‘No, ..... two each’
‘Twenty of us, ....... twenty seven pound fifty’.
‘No that’s each'!
‘You owe him £2.50’
‘You are the weakest link... Good Bye’!