MD’s inter-county match
Saturday 14th April saw our first inter-county match this was the away leg at Rycroft fishery, just off jt24A of the M1 at Hemmington. I loaded the car ready for an early start an even woke up before the alarm which turn out to be a good thing as the car wind-screen was frozen and so I sat in the car for 5minutes with the engine running to defrost the window before setting off at about 6.15. I was first to arrive at Trowel services where we had arranged to meet up. Into the services for a quick snack and drinks then outside to wait for the rest of the team. Shortly after two more cars turned up so 5 of our 8man team had arrived, they informed me there was a bloke on a bridge near junction 30 looking like he was going to jump. I got a text from Pete our captain saying he was held up by an incident at junction 30 and had to take a detour around it, so the guy must have jumped. We eventually got to the venue to meet up with the opposition at the side of the lake we were to fish with very little knowledge a bit of banter as usual then the draw we got the odd numbers and I drew peg 3. The lake was oval and other than the wind there appeared to be no real advantage in the draw. We waited for the open match guys to draw and move their cars off so we could park behind our pegs.
No point in complicating it so I set up two pole rigs one for worn the other for maggot and mixed a little ground bait. At the all it at about 10.30 I started on chopped worm, feeding it in the ground bait through a toss pot at 8mtrs, I was soon into my first fish a small roach and the a few more followed then a couple of skimmers, these were slightly bigger but not really big enough, I noticed next door landing a carp on a pellet waggler. I hadn’t got mine out because of the cold north wind which was getting strong as had been forecast. The I tried a piece of corn on the hook trying to temp a larger bream I had heard were in the lake. Set up with white hydro and an 0.08mm hook length to a 16 drennan silver fish hook carp were the last thing I was after, but that’s what I got a nice common of around 7-8lb, then not a lot else.
Top -bottom
Almost packed up and ready for the weigh in
Chub about 3lb
whoops, smile for the camera
That's better 13lb of carp
Next door was catching on the pellet waggler and they were big fish and so I reached for my waggler to try and play catch play catch up, but alas it was in vane, by the end of the match I was well and truly battered, and on my own pellet waggler, I weight in only 32lb to his 132lb. it was enough for me to only finish 7th in a field of 16. I suppose it wasn’t bad as it was only the first time I had ever seen the venue.
