Me and Janders had missed the first match in this league due to a clash with the Crown league and as you can only drop one match I was keen to get off to a good start. The weather was awful with a very cold wind and freezing rain. I drew peg 15 which meant nothing to me apart from I knew it wasn’t one of the hot corner pegs. After another recent influx of carp, weights had been pretty good and although I’m not a fan of carp bashing I was quite looking forward to having my string pulled.
I set up two 0.4 gram Drennan carp floats, one to fish out at 10 metres and the other for the inside to my right at about five metres. Both rigs had 0.14 mm bottoms and Fox Match carp hooks. On the whistle (or rather Les shouting all in very loudly) I cupped in some 4 mm pellets, chili hemp and a few grains of corn on both lines. With double red maggot on the hook I started on the longer line and after a few minutes battling the wind the float sunk from view and I landed (!) a half ounce roach. Next put in I had another but it dropped off and then I had my second roach, it was time to try the corn.
This proved very uneventful and the wind was being a right pain, from what I could see around the pond, not a lot was happening. Janders was still blanking, Tommy opposite had caught a few small fish and next to him Steve Bishop had landed a bream and a small carp so not the bagging session I had anticipated. From the banter around the pond it seemed Chris Haines on corner peg 11 was getting a few and Mark Hollister on peg 3 was landing fish quite regularly. I cupped in some more feed at 10 metres and tried my inside line, two more small roach on maggot prompted me to switch to corn. I had a couple of bites which I missed and I was getting colder by the minute but at least the rain had finally stopped.
After another cup of coffee I went for a walk, ‘Rockin’ Roy Fowler next to me had caught four small skimmers, Les Braunton on 13 had one small carp plus bits and Butch Baker had one small carp, Chris Haines on 11 had 9 carp and a tench and his peg was like a mill pool. Dejected I walked back. I did bump a carp but I was rapidly going off this carp lark. Hollister walked by with a carp (as all fish over 8lb had to weighed by Les straight away and put back) and on his return I asked what it had weighed and he replied 11lb 14oz, which was a nice bonus.
My mate Andy came round for a natter, he’d had around a dozen small fish and wasn’t enjoying himself at all, I did miss a bite while he was there but to be honest I was ready for the match to finish. I did manage a carp of around 2lb with an hour to go and thought I might get a few more to give me a chance of my five peg section but it didn’t happen. The match finally ended and I packed up before following the weigh in. ‘Picky’ Gage on peg 1 had 19lb and lead very briefly before Hollister plonked 48lb on the scales, the next decent weight was Hainsey who had over 35lb and those three were the top weights on the day. My five fish weighed 2lb 6oz for nowhere although I did take pounds off Janders who blanked and Andy who didn’t weigh and is now giving up fishing.
Despite not enjoying it very much, I’ve booked in for matches on Friday and Sunday, wish me luck.
