part nine...

Summer here again, or only round the corner, so it seems. Time for thoughts of carp and warmer weather fishing. Proper nets of fish being weighed on real scales, not those sensitive enough to measure out ingredients for a cake!

Practice Makes Prefect
Our latest match was to be held on the famous, or is it infamous, Meridian Lake at Border Fisheries, near Crewe. This was a match which I was desperate to do well on, and seeing as my last and only visit to this particular pool on the venue was during a particularly hard winter league campaign and involved me being in the middle of 26 blanks I thought I’d better have a look. To be honest I wasn't completely sure what the fishing was like on the venue so I had a bit of a quick practice during the week before our match.

I’m not sure in retrospect whether this was such a good idea, not due to the method that I sorted out on the practice, that worked all right, but for the amount of stick that I got from the rest of the lads when they found out. Come to think of if it I would have got away with the practice had Mrs Moors not said, in front of half the club, ‘‘How did you get on the other day?’’

Barbel Alley?
The ‘practice’ involved a 6 hour session on a non-de-script peg selected for me by Jeff Moors, the resident PAA coach at Border, (shortly after his wife has sorted me out with a couple of bacon sandwiches from her caravan on the car park). Jeff gave me a quick resumé of what he expected to do the business and left me to it. I like that, not looking over the old shoulder, 'you don’t do it like that!' sort of help.

The practice went fine although I was surprised to be catching quite so many barbel whilst fishing up in the water, although I did find some good ways of catching them on the deck as well. The barbel made up at least 60 percent of my weight even though I was sort of expecting carp, but as I caught well over 25lb of them as well I didn’t really care. The wind varied between a gentle breeze and a dead stop. I noticed that during the times when the wind stopped I had to swap to fishing further over tight to the far bank reeds but when the wind put a ripple on the surface I could catch pretty much all over.

Lazer Days
The day of the match came and I was really looking forward to it, (as you would), so I was at the meeting point bright and early. The day was brilliant, rather more bright than either I was expecting or than had been the case in midweek. But there wasn’t a breath of wind, well I thought, I’ll have to fish tight over all match and so it turned out.

Even though the place was designed to provide identical pegs of identical widths and depths (all laid out with laser beams) I still found that the peg I eventually drew seemed to be slightly narrower than the one I fished previously. I mean my eight metre swim that was mid way across in mid week seemed to be nearly all the way across on the far bank on the day of the match!!!!! The laser beam must have had a kink in it on the day they measured that bit!

Meridian, aerial photo. Laid out with lasers, can you see the flat spot ?

Sunshine, got a licence for those knees
During the wait for all to arrive in the sun at the Little Chef we unfortunately found that the self same sun also brought out Rick knees and we were visually assaulted by this nightmarish vision when he arrived at Little Chef. I’ll tell you how white they were, I looked directly at the sun during the eclipse without harm but you needed Top Gun sun glasses to protect your vision if you were to dare to look directly at the lower half of Ricks body in that bright early morning sunlight. I’m told that the first week of his holidays he tries to get from his normal bluey white to just pale by sitting in the sun for hours on end.

Foreign Legions
Worse was to come only a short while later when even this visual torments government health warning was challenged in the bad taste stakes by Don’s ‘sons of the desert’ French foreign legion hat, complete with the cat flap at the back. I’ve got to admit that even I have one of these but I only nicked mine from a slightly inebriated well known national fishing magazine editor in Toledo during the 1999 World Championships in Spain. The main difference between mine and the one Don has is that I dare not wear mine in public, perhaps KW shouldn’t have either although being ginger he did go a nice lobster colour in 37° in the shade, perhaps it was as well that he did wear it.

Does this look good on me? ... go on, be truthful.

In the match I fortunately drew roughly where I wanted to be, not that I knew where the best draw would have been but from reputation one area seemed to do better than most (in the Winter league any way) and without this sort of draw I would have been generally less confident. I wasn’t sure that I could catch barbel up in the water just anywhere. In retrospect I’m still sure I would have done all right where ever I drew. I was in one of them sorts of moods, you know those that you know when you are on a run so you don’t think of anything but winning the match. Confidence was high.

Pesky carp!
The match went pretty much to plan although I was surprised when unlike mid week I didn’t catch that many barbel, I even tried the sure fire, fail safe, barbel decking method, worked out during the practice and frustratingly found myself being pestered by carp. Never mind, this was the sort of thing that I was expecting during the practice. I was able to catch carp, well up in the water most of the day and at times I could even see the backs of the fish I was about to catch just below the surface of the water.

Five hours went like five minutes and soon Jeff came around for the weigh in on his quad bike which is hand both to collect the keep nets and give some of the old codgers a lift back to the car park. (Did I forget to mention that they are provided here also, what a good idea to prevent the need for us getting the car boot soaking wet in fishy smelling water.) You don’t realise how far it is around this venue until you realise that there are more than sixty pegs on the Meridian, all reasonably well spaced, 13-15 metres or so, plus the distance to the path behind you making it well over the best part of a kilometre around. Now I know why he has a quad for the weigh in.

I think I was about second to weigh out of the 25 or so of us, (good turn out for a Friday club match), and dropped just short of 40lb in the sprout sack. The nearest challengers for the match were all about 12 - 15lb. short of my weight so I was pretty happy overall although I still got called all sorts of names. In retrospect I was more than happy with this result as out of all the matches on the venue that week it was about the fourth or fifth best weight. OK for a beginner after one practice I suppose.

One of our other recent matches was at Cheshire Fisheries. A small complex near Tattenhall just outside Chester. There are a mixture of both Course pools and Fly only pools tightly packed together. It’s a place we don’t often go but it seems to have it’s own little following of mainly pleasure anglers. The prices are a bit steep so not many tight fisted match anglers ever go there.

Little things please little minds
The lake we were on was of a reasonable size for about twelve which they let out to bookings of a minimum of 18, you know the sort of thing, thirteen midgets paces between pegs which merely comprise of bare worn patches along the bank. You may have thought for six pounds fifty a peg that they could invest in some proper platforms or something. This is the sort of venue where two anglers fishing the feeder opposite each other cast onto each others feet.

Our meeting spot for this one was the car park of a pub on the outskirts of Chester, arriving in dribs and drabs over the course of quarter of an hour or so, chatting away, until comes point in time where we think everyone worth waiting for has arrived. On this particular occasion, Cookie, our resident ‘Entertainer’ had attached fluorescent card spurs to the heels of Henry’s shoes whilst he was deep in conversation about the price of crude on the international futures market, or something else as devastatingly important to the future of our club, or was he recounting a Jim Davidson joke he heard on telly the night before.
John Waynes brother!

Spurs 1, My Arse Nil
Henry wore those spurs for the entire journey to the venue, and a considerable period of our match before he cottoned on to the prank. Boy was he steamed.

The other prank that Ian often plays is to stick fake number plates onto the real plates of other members cars. We’ve driven 40 or 50 miles to venues in convoy behind the likes of WANKER 1 before now. On one occasion Roy Bandy, our life size impression of Ricky Thomlinson got MY ARSE attached to his van. The manager of the venue at that match even got some of the regulars to go up to him for his autograph.

Even I’ve had JAPS I 1, on the front of my car for a 100 mile motorway drive after a match to my parents in northern Lancashire. I don’t know why or when he started the Jap Sniper nick name for me, its not even as if I draw next to a bush every match and I certainly don’t eat raw fish, even with a little Chianti. Anyway the Lancashire police saw the funny side although they are now waiting for a white Fiesta van, registration PEARL HARBOUR to be spotted approaching from a Merseyside direction just as soon as the JAP gets the chance to get his own back on him.

Miser pint
The match itself was positively uneventful after these goings on, I took several sacks full of method mix with me as the previous occasions people have been close to running out, (in retrospect it has only happened once and that was Don who would have used up his entire 5 shillings bait allowance with a single bag of the stuff. His weekly bait bill, so I am told amounts to a quarter of a pint of each, pinkies, mixed maggots, casters and hemp. I’m glad he doesn’t buy any drinks on the way home. (Could I have mentioned before that Don gives misers a bad name? I am informed by his family he can be very generous at times, I mean when it gets really cold I understand that he even lights the candle for them to sit round to keep warm at home, however in our company he is even known to begrudge breathing out.)

The match ultimately was poor, and I took home a lorry full of unused method mix. The weather probably contributed to to the poor returns with Ron (the builder, can he fix it) frequently engaged in a severe tussle with his brolley in the gale force wind until it gave up the ghost a turned inside out for the last time on this earth.

Ronnie testing out the new Daiwa satellite dish.

..... and some fell on stony ground!
The only fishing news of note from this carp puddle was that Sonny Cooper drew a peg he was happy with, (particularly as he fishes the place on a sort of regular basis), and cleaned up the match with about 20lb of carp on the pole for one of his infrequent match wins. Sonny’s claim to fame is that Bob Nudd personally taught him everything he knows, well actually we bought him a signed copy Bob's book on ‘Pole Fishing’ as a get well soon present when he has his stroke a couple of years ago. I haven’t read it yet but the chapter on using the same rig for every match, made from 6lb straight through to a size ten forged eyed hook, with 6 inches of porcupine quill swaying above the water line must be one not to miss. I don’t know how he catches fish on it, but every now and again he surprises us, (and himself) and snares a few aquatically challenged creatures for a good result.

Sonny desperate for the cash, he could buy a new float now ! Despite all this there was never a more popular winner of one of our matches, which just goes to prove, in fishing, every dog, eventually, has his day. Even if he’s too tight to buy more than one float.


Ben learn't more in this five minutes than ..... well Sonny, in fact. But don’t tell the editor were is hat is.