I don't know if it was Gonzo or Kermit but I do know that for a large percentage of the Leatherhead DAS match at Stub Pond, I certainly fished like a Muppett !
With Pete Turnbull away fishing a ten peg match at Gold Valley for £1,000 I'd volunteered to run the match. With twenty anglers down to fish, we had the whole of the left hand bank of Plantation Lake (about 30 pegs) which meant that we could peg 2 pegs and then leave one, meaning that every peg had a spare peg to one side. With the wind blowing down the lake towards Peg 1, the low pegs looked a favoured draw but he main thing was that you really wanted to draw an odd numbered peg as this would give you your empty peg on the downwind side.
With the draw complete I was left with Peg 2 at the favoured end of the lake but with my empty peg the wrong side. Luckily for me, most of the "Stars" had drawn all in a line at the other end. The one thing I learnt on the day was that as match organiser, don't wait until last to pick up your fishery supplied net, as when I went to put my two keepnets in, one had a wonky locking mechanism which wouldn't tighten and the other had a broken top ring ! This meant that every time I caught a fish I had to bend down and lift the top ring up before transfering the fish from the landing net.
My plan of action was to fish two edge swims, plus one at 5 metres just down the shelf and one at 9 metres. Baitwise, not suprisingly for me, it was an out and out paste attack, with a big bottle of hemp for feed. The strong wind made fishing at nine metres difficult as the peg was quite deep and the lake towing but despite that, I managed to pick up a few small carp and a couple of 7lbers in the first couple of hours and with 2 hours gone, probably had about 12 fish in the net. A couple of dispondent wanderers came down from the other end to report that Donald Garnish had 9 carp, Big Brian had about 8 - no I didn't believe it either (only joking Brian) and most of the others were struggling.
However, from then on, my whole match went tits up (or a bit Roland as my mate Sconeee would say). I'm usually very calm when things go wrong in matches and don't usually let them affect me but yesterday was the exception as I very nearly turned into a "Tackle Chucker"and I must admit that my language was a bit "Industrial" to say the least. I think the heat might have had something to do with it as well as I felt I was slowly being cooked in the humid conditions.
My list of problems went something like this:-
Every time I tried to throw a handfull of hemp in the upwind edge peg, the wind gusted and I ended up feeding my rod bag which was lying along the bank to hold some rushes away from the edge.
At one point when striking at what looked like "Proper" bites I managed to hook a fish which I then played for ages before coming off at my feet with a big scale on the hook - this then happened 7 times in a row !
I got snapped up twice fishing 0.20 line when big fish tried to swim off to the far bank.
The floppy nets were getting on my nerves as I had to bend right down each time to place a fish in the net.
The fish kept digging up the silt which meant I kept moving the float up the line and eventually the line was too short in the windy conditions to hold the float still. I struggled on, not fishing properly until giving myself a good talking to and convinced myself to stop fishing and tie another rig. I tied another one, measured it up against the other one and the new one was too short as well...........aaaarrrrggggghhhhhh !
One of the screws on the leg on the front of my platform wouldn't tighten properly and the leg slipped about 5 times during the match, almost pitching me head first into the lake each time !
I expected to bag up in the edge in the last hour but only had 1 carp there despite having a few liners and bow waving fish.
I got invaded by skimmers that kept knocking the paste off the hook and eventually put a small hook on with a 10mm sized pieces of paste and caught 20lb of them before going back to fishing for carp.
I did still manage to catch the odd fish or two amonst all the mayhem but knew I really really should have walked the match if I 'd only fished half sensibly. I finished the match with a last cast carp but with stories filtering down from the far end that a few of them had bagged up late in the match, I really didn't think that I'd even frame. Being on on eof the early pegs I grabbed the scales and Eddie Derrick from Peg 1 and we made our way to peg 10 to weigh back along the bank. Mike Mortimore's new minder Jack Almeida (he keeps drawing next to him and must get ear ache) weighed first and took the lead with 60lb but was almost immediately over taken by Don who plonked 135-8-0 on the scales. Brian then weighed 88lb before my two floppy nets went 124-0-0. I'd just sorted out the money in the car park when the board arrived from the top section which Smiffy had won with 116-4-0 followed by Ross with 87-12-0.
So all in all, a very very frustrating days fishing as I'd fished like an idiot and still finished second by only a couple of fish.
Next week we are off to Morehouse farm on Sidwinder lake which none of us have fished before so that will be fun, I do love fishing new venues - However, before then, I've just manged to book Wednesday off for a fishing day - don't know where I'll end up but it could well be Willinghurst. Come back later in the week to see where I end up and how I get on.
