Having spent the whole of Saturday working at the London Lights Tour, I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked to have been. However, having missed a weekends fishing, I was raring to go, especially as I had organised a Match Fishing Scene event on John's Lake at Willinghurst. I always enjoy the MFS matches as they are a decent bunch of blokes and nobody takes it too seriously. We also had the pleasure of the local nutter, Mick the Bookie's company so at least I wouldn't be last - or so I thought !!!! When fishing John's Lake you find yourself checking the weather forecast continuously in the week beforehand as it is a worse wind trap than Monks Lake as Ricky Baxter found out on the Wednesday when he popped over for a sneaky practice and found waves battering the front of his platform. In fact Martyn Dwayne who'd also gone, didn't even bother getting his gear out.
Fortunately when we arrived Sunday morning the wind was a lot lighter that had been predicted and also off your back a bit on the near bank instead of the usual "down the lake" so I wouldn't need my gram and a half floats after all.With 15 anglers fishing I was able to peg what I think are the better pegs and give everyone a lot of room with a blank peg either side. At the draw my first criteria for a "decent" draw was that I want a peg from 11-27 as 33-43 would have the wind in their faces. Next criteria was that I fancied drawing 15-21 as these pegs have consistently produced in most of the matches that I have fished or seen on John's Lake. It was decided that I should draw first so I gave the responsibility to Haisman and he drew me Peg 27 - the right bank for me, an end peg as well but I thought a bit too far up.With the wind off my back or slightly right to left, it wasn't too bad and I quite fancied it for a few fish. I set up a short line down the shelf at about 6 metres well to my left, one at 13 metres at 10'clock and a lead to have a chuck about for a carp. I fed both the pole lines with Marukyu 130 and some dead maggots. Both my pole rigs were Wilkie diamond floats fished with a double bulk which were kindly donated to me by Mr Haisman at his birthday party a few years ago when he was slightly the worse for wear !
I wish I could say that I then had a bite a chuck for the next 5 hours as fish after fish jumped on my hook and it took two of us to pull my nets out at the end of the match......................but I can't !
In fact for the next three hours I swapped about between both pole lines and chucking a piece of corn around my peg on the lead as both my keep nets remained empty. It wasn't all doom and gloom though as the Christmas Shop selling Xmas trees and other Xmas tat was playing a lovely selection of Christmas tunes over their music system to keep everyone in the right spirit.
Right spirit ? they must have actually purchased a CD of the worst, most annoying Xmas records performed by the worst artists you could think of and seemed to be playing it on a continuous loop ! After about 4 hours of it I think I'd heard it all the way through about 5 times and I even found myself joining in and playing two sections of my pole as an additional trumpet ! They also have horse and carriage rides there when you can pay a couple of quid and go on a journey of about 100 yards up to the cabin and back - anyway, it was funny especially when someone asked if it was Herbie's Taxi !
Right spirit ? they must have actually purchased a CD of the worst, most annoying Xmas records performed by the worst artists you could think of and seemed to be playing it on a continuous loop ! After about 4 hours of it I think I'd heard it all the way through about 5 times and I even found myself joining in and playing two sections of my pole as an additional trumpet ! They also have horse and carriage rides there when you can pay a couple of quid and go on a journey of about 100 yards up to the cabin and back - anyway, it was funny especially when someone asked if it was Herbie's Taxi !
With two hours to go I had a small roach on my long pole but with Ricky, Shedders and a few others all catching small fish consistently, I hate to say it but it was going to be all or nothing for me as I was going to need carp to frame. It was obvious that the carp weren't really having it as although Tyrone had caught two, I think they were the only ones caught on the whole lake. I therefore decided to just cast a bit of corn around the peg for the rest of the match and just have a 5 minute look on the pole lines every now and then to see if any skimmers had turned up over my groundbait. Twenty minutes later the tip went round almost as soon as the bait hit the bottom and a carp of 2-5-0 was soon in the net. How do I know exactly how much it weighed I hear you ask ? Cos it was the only bite I had before the final whistle went ! Lewey next to me was blanking with an hour to go but managed to put a few fish together in the final 60 minutes including a decent sized skimmer and seemed quite excited to record 2-11-0 and in his words "Batter me off the next peg".
With a 3.15 finish I grabbed the scales as soon as the whistle went as I didn't want to be weighing in using a torch. Herbie was leading the far bank with 6-2-0 (no I didn't believe it either) until Tyrone plonked 2 carp and some silvers on the scales for 6-12-0. Reaching my peg, I weighed my paltry 2-5-0 and agreed with Lewey that we'd put 12-5-0 on the weigh sheet just to get everyone going - I told them I had 4 carp in the last hour !
Our jolly jape worked quite well as it seemed to wind up most of the anglers on my bank with comments like " You F ing jammy little bastard, shouldn't allow carp blah blah blah etc etc".
Shedders weigh 8-11-0, Ricky topped that with 9-2-0 and even the Bookie had 4-5-0. Oh yes I'd better tell you that Haisman had 4-15-0 and beat the anglers either side of him or he'll get the hump !
Whilst the fishing was tougher than expected, the craic was good and at least the promised rain only arrived once we were happily ensconced in the cabin.
Result
Ricky Baxter...............Peg 19..................9-5-0
Shedfull........................Peg 23.................8-11-0
Tyrone..........................Peg 33.................6-12-0
Heeeerrrrbbbbiee.... Peg 43..................6-2-0
Rolly............................Peg 21...................5-3-0
Next week we have the Leatherhead DAS Xmas match on the lakes around the corner from my house so at least I should have a few more bites than the two I had this week !
