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Now that I have set out my intentions I can get on with telling you about my last two weeks fishing. Well, actually I will start at work before I got home, there I was sitting at work with a few things getting me really down and I thought what I need is a weekend away fishing, and then low and behold I’m browsing the AN forum and I see a fish-in planned for the fist weekend of my break at Wingham! Perfect, a quick bit of research into the venue reveals its bream and tench potential and an e-mail was quickly despatched to Steve Burke and my place on the fish-in confirmed! Upon arrival home a trip to My local tackle shop Chapman’s to purchase the necessary bits and bobs was required and then it was home to sort out my tackle in the tackle shed! Once all the tackle and bait was as sorted out as it could be I nipped down to my local club water to have a look round and see who was fishing. Two of the regulars were down there, man and wife, and they were soon trying to persuade my to fetch my tackle and have a couple of hours……..oh what the hell, the lake is one 5 minutes from my house so I set off back home and fetched the tackle! A feeder rig was quickly set up and sillibait and brown crumb groundbait mixed up and I was soon after the lakes bream and tench! Well the prolific rudd population had other ideas, as is so often the case on this water thats all I could catch, “I know” I thought “I’ll put corn on and sit it out for something a bit bigger” Well I did catch bigger fish but bigger rudd, not that I’m complaining, they were all beautiful gleaming bars of gold with bright red fins! And at 5-6oz nice fish indeed! So the next morning I was up bright and early ready for the drive down from my Winterton (Nr Scunthorpe) home to Wingham (Nr Canterbury) Kent. Tackle loaded, bait (both mine and the fishes) loaded, and map book at the ready and off I set to Kent at 9.30ish. This readers, is where the plan went wrong! Half an hour down the road I reach Dunham bridge on the Trent, I pull up to the junction, and the car, VW Polo, stalls, and then refuses to start, uh oh, a quick look round reveals a gravel track off the road about 40 yards back, I jump out the car and go back to my scrumaging days in rugby and push the car back up the wrong side of the road praying that nothing comes around the corner, and get the car off the road just in time as a huge articulated lorry comes into view! Right now to get the car started, bonnet up……..15mins later, phone out. “Dad, the cars broke down………” To cut a long story short I ended up making myself a deadline, if the cars not started by 3pm I will have to rethink my plans. Well the car eventually gets towed back to Scunthorpe by Dad (hero) and we change out rotor arm (dad’s suspicion), car doesn’t start, coil (my suspicion) car doesn’t start. Scratching of heads plus drumming of fingers, conclusion, must be the distributor, quick trip to the scrappers new distributor and the car fires up first time at five to three, well I made the deadline and now I must stick to it! Four hours later and a very stiff me turns up at Wingham just in time to see Singhy’s second carp, (see story elsewhere on this site) and what a cracker it was! The gear was then quickly unloaded and then reloaded into Steve’s Volvo and off we go as far as we can to my peg, gear is then unloaded and humped halfway round the gravel pit to my recommended peg! First job, cup of tea, second job, put up tent, lesson learnt, it takes more than one man to put up a three man tent! Third job set rod up, chuck to the bottom of marginal shelf, and bait up with combination of sillibait, brown crumb, maggots, casters, hemp, pellets and corn. Fourth job sleep cos I’m bloody knackered after two weeks at work and a long day and need a good nights sleep. Once again here the plan goes wrong. More precisely four thirty in the morning the plan goes wrong, although much more pleasantly this time, my need for sleep is completely disregarded by a 6lb 8oz tench! Yessss! A new p.b. Boy was I happy! Back out goes the rod but not another touch all day, oh well that’s the way it goes with fishing, still you couldn’t remove the smile from my face! Midday comes and with it a trip to Sandwich to stock up on supplies, both kinds of bait, human and fish, and then back to Wingham for a smashing bar-bee-que and then back to the fishing, second night and I’m just dosing off when the alarm starts playing a tune again, another big fish on, more than likely a tench, only I will never know as the hook knot gave way about 10 seconds later! It has to be the worst feeling in the world when the line goes slack! lesson learnt, always check your hook knots! This was then followed up with the capture of probably one of the smallest tench in Wingham at 2lb 12oz if memory serves me! And then a good nights sleep! Next day and all to soon it was time to pack up and head back up the motorway after another brilliant bar-bee-que and around 10 people watching the start of the grand prix on a 6 inch portable TV!!! The next fishing trip was the Monday night sweepstake match at the club water, these are fished from six till nine with the draw taking place at half five. This would be my first match in about 3 years and I had forgotten how long it takes to set up your tackle, my plan was to catch a few rudd and then go for the tench. Alas the tench did not show and the match was won with four pounds of rudd by the guy in the next peg. I finished with three pounds of rudd, which wasn’t bad considering I spent half the match on the feeder looking for a tench, if I had gone exclusively for rudd I reckon I could have won, but then life is full of ifs and butts, and fourth place was still a good result which gave me nine points for the league. A midweek session was then used to perfect my plan for the five hour Saturday memorial match once again on the club water. I ‘bagged up’ on rudd taking eight pounds of them and the plan was perfected. Start off on waggler catching rudd and draw them in to about twelve meters from the bank, then fish a similar waggler rig on pole set two feet deep and fished 6-7 meters to hand! I couldn’t fail! Oh yes I could, come Saturday and I draw the far side of the lake and nowhere near where the rudd had been showing, five hours of switching between waggler and feeder later and I weighed in one pound thirteen ounces! And to make matters worse my brother weighed in two pounds four ounces and beat me, and don’t I know about it! Well neither of us finished anywhere and the match was won with eight pounds of rudd from the other side of the lake, still it could have been worse, Alf the club secretary pegged next to me only had two bites and weighed in one rudd for four ounces! Still none of the big tench showed? Roll on Monday night! Monday night came and I drew peg four where the previous Monday night sweepstake had been won from, I would say I ran to my peg but I cant because my car was already parked behind the peg at the draw! Still I set up quickly in anticipation, this time I was not going to bother with going for a tench it was bit bashing all night for me! The first hour and everything went to plan although it was a little slower than I had hoped still I was doing as well as anybody, then it started to drizzle. Now I hate fishing under an umbrella and I looked up and made my meteorologist prediction, “ it’ll pass”, I said as I put on my light weight waterproof jacket. Well it did, after about half an hour but in that time it became somewhat heavier, when it finally left us I had become very wet indeed, right at least I can get back into my rhythm of rudd catching now, I thought, once again, wrong! After the rain left so did the rudd, and to make thing worse the T word could be heard all along the bank, yes the tench had finished spawning and it seemed like everybody except me had caught one so much for my rudd plan! At the weigh-in it wasn’t as bad as it first seamed, I had two pounds twelve ounces and I had only been beaten by five people all with tench, one cracker of six pounds fifteen ounces, and the odd crucian. And that was it, Tuesday saw me journeying back to Aberdeen in preparation for going to work on Wednesday! A busy and enjoyable two weeks fishing with a p.b. tench! Next month I wont be able to do as much fishing as I’m off to Greece for a week on a lad’s holiday with Club 18 – 30 which through unfortunate planning coincides with the glorious 16th, still I’ll have a beer and think of the Trent and then when I get home I’ll hopefully go and fish it! That’s all from me for this month, any comments or criticisms gratefully received as this is my first go at writing an article, you can contact me through my profile on the AN forum, Tight Lines, Mally |
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