Every now and then I get a match that for some reason excites me more than usual. It could be a venue I really like or just something a bit different from my usual run of the mill match carp fishing.
Sunday was one of those matches as Hathers had kindly invited me to fish with his mates in the Medway Trotters match on the Main Lake at Bury Hill Fisheries. Now, there are a number of reasons I like Bury Hill, the first is that on match days, my old mate and former match fishing star Kenny Collings works there and it is always a pleasure to see him and get some abuse. The second is that it is one of the most picturesque fisheries I know and the third is that it makes a change to be fishing for bream every now and then rather than carp.
Although , having said that, there are probably 3 carp pegs out of the 50 pegs usually used on matches and in the last 3 matches I have drawn 2 of them. The first was when I drew peg 1 on the Front Bank - pictured above. It doesn't look very fishy does it ?
Anyway I had a glorious days fishing, catching out in front at 12 metres and down by the bushes with most fish falling to either single or double expander. I think I won the match with 2 carp (for 17lb), about 35lb of tench to 5lb and some skimmers for a total of 80lb. And whilst I was under no illusions that it was a very very good peg, it was nice to beat the likes of Steve Gardener, Terry Harrison and Geoff Vallence etc etc.
The other time I drew Peg 26 by the club house (another featureless peg as you can see) and came 4th with about 40lb, which included a small bonus carp of 23-12-0 on a large piece of paste and gave me a few scary moments as it spent the first 10 minutes of the fight under the boathouse !
As I write this, it is Saturday morning, so pop back sometime on Monday to see how I got on. Hopefully I can report on how I drew a peg with a bit of room, fished the pole all day and won the match with 70lb of bream and tench...............but dont hold your breath !
