I had a choice of matches to fish this weekend, and the question was, should I fish the Saturday match on Sumners Match lake or the Dells Xmas match on the “Silver Fish Lake on Sunday. I finally chose the Saturday match, and what a shambles that turned out to be !
Arriving at the on site café, match organiser Terry Molloy was conspicuous by his absence having apparently been on the “Lash” on Friday. We therefore had no draw numbers, pegs or scales and whilst we could sort out some paper for pegs and draw numbers, weighing in was likely to be a problem.
We made our way to the lake to find that despite the weather turning much milder, the lake was not only frozen but the ice was bloody thick as well and at least half of the ice breakers we had with us just bounced.
Tony Yianni did a fine job of sorting out some pegs and draw numbers, my hat was commandeered as a draw bag and we were off. Once again, I drew on the shallower right hand bank along with Ross and Ged Cooper, which was not a good draw for me as I have picked up a chest infection and annoying cough which was set off every time I laughed, which when you draw near Ged you do quite a lot. The cough was so bad that Marcus Page opposite started referring to me as “Wheezy” - the old penguin in Toy Story !
Anyway, one of the benefits of being an office worker when it comes to ice breaking is that all you need to do is have a couple of feeble 4 metre chucks with the breaker and you always get a macho manual worker (in my case Marcus Page a “hunky brickie”) come over a say I’ll show you how to do it ! You then sit back whilst they huff and puff a bit and then just clear the broken ice with your landing net. THANKS MARCUS !
Arriving at the on site café, match organiser Terry Molloy was conspicuous by his absence having apparently been on the “Lash” on Friday. We therefore had no draw numbers, pegs or scales and whilst we could sort out some paper for pegs and draw numbers, weighing in was likely to be a problem.
We made our way to the lake to find that despite the weather turning much milder, the lake was not only frozen but the ice was bloody thick as well and at least half of the ice breakers we had with us just bounced.
Tony Yianni did a fine job of sorting out some pegs and draw numbers, my hat was commandeered as a draw bag and we were off. Once again, I drew on the shallower right hand bank along with Ross and Ged Cooper, which was not a good draw for me as I have picked up a chest infection and annoying cough which was set off every time I laughed, which when you draw near Ged you do quite a lot. The cough was so bad that Marcus Page opposite started referring to me as “Wheezy” - the old penguin in Toy Story !
Anyway, one of the benefits of being an office worker when it comes to ice breaking is that all you need to do is have a couple of feeble 4 metre chucks with the breaker and you always get a macho manual worker (in my case Marcus Page a “hunky brickie”) come over a say I’ll show you how to do it ! You then sit back whilst they huff and puff a bit and then just clear the broken ice with your landing net. THANKS MARCUS !
At 11 o’clock we were ready for the off and after last Wednesdays match where people caught roach on maggot and small crucians on pellet , I had decided to fish one rig with maggot and also try fishing bread punch in the hope that I could catch both types of fish on it. Whilst I did catch on the punch, it was actually slower than fishing maggot and once again, there weren’t any crucians caught over our side of the lake anyway. Everyone was catching a few roach and although lots of mine were very small, after a “Weighing in” conversation which revolved around hanging a net on a piece of elastic and seeing how far it stretched, we finally agreed to have a fish count to decide the winner instead ! I was therefore quite happy to be catching fish that were at least half the size of Ged’s at the next peg.
With 15 minutes to go Simon (the owner) arrived and on hearing our tales of woe, zoomed off in his little buggy only to return with a set of digital scales and a weigh net – so that was my “Small fish” plan scuppered !
At the weigh in, Joe Clark leapt to the top of the leader board with 9lb only to be pipped by Tony Yianni with 10-15-0, Tony Kent slid into second place with 9-5-0 and with just me Ged and Ross to weigh it looked like that would be the top 3. However after Ged’s 8-8-0 and my feeble 5-5-0, Ross then proved he is more than just a carp angler by plonking 10-9-0 on the scales for second place.
Whilst I have enjoyed the “Roach Races” at Sumners over the past week, if I am going to continue to fish for silvers over the winter, I think I may need to make an effort to scale down from 0.12 line and grey hydro !
Result
Tony Yianni 10-15-0
Ross Nursey 10-9-0
Tony Kent 9-5-0
Joe Clark 9-0-0
Ged Cooper 8-8-0
Don Garnish 8-6-0
Jeff Dickinson 8-2-0
Bob Poulton 7-6-0
Marcus Page 6-9-0
Ian Chatfield 6-6-8
Dave Pearson 5-5-0
Brian Wharton 4-15-0
Sponge Bob 4-2-0
On Friday I am fishing the Total-Fishing.com xmas match at Wood Lane Farm although having never even seen it before, I don’t expect to do that well, and on Sunday me and Ross are booked into a match at Framfield. Return here in the New Year to see how I fared.
Have a Great Xmas everyone.
