By Colin Mercer | No Comments
Last updated: Monday, December 14, 2009

I made a commitment to myself a few years ago that writing about fishing would never get in the way of actually going fishing. As a consequence my blogs are occasional rather than regular, so apologies for that.

This Year

2009 has been a reasonable year for me. On the team front we have had some success. In the Division 1 National my team, Last Cast, finished fourth. This was a great performance, coming home ahead of Daiwa, Barnsley and plenty of other good teams.  The Shakespeare Superteam blitzed it with a truly remarkable points return. Well done to them.

It is difficult to explain the sheer effort that goes into getting a team on the National starting grid. There is paperwork to complete, you typically need 12 anglers in a squad (to cover for illness) and each one must be enrolled individually with the Angling Trust. There are 5 betting pools to enter, you have to sort accommodation, practices (as if), bait (there was a squatt shortage this year) and so on. You need to gather information on the venue(s) and then distribute this to your anglers. Then the week before the match you have to stand-down two anglers (10 man teams). You must ensure every angler gets to the draw on time, brings their rod licence, and then gets to the right peg for the start of the match. Add in the inevitable costs incurred, and by the morning of the match you are just relieved to get fishing. So team management is not for the faint hearted. Ultimately though, a great result makes the effort worthwhile.

Last Cast Philosophy

The philosophy at Last Cast is to select good anglers, and let them sort it for themselves. Obviously there is some discussion and sharing of ideas before hand, but on the day it is down to each angler to approach his swim as he sees fit. In building the team I intentionally do not force anglers to practice. To an extent Last Cast is a collection of free spirits – anglers like Keiron, Andy and Derek like to do their own thing, only joining the Last Cast fold in the run up to a big event. That’s fine by me – the way I see it they are out practicing virtually every day anyhow – just not on the venue itself!

Other results this year

My year started well with a win in the Stafford Moor Total Fishing Silvers Festival. Then in the Spring I spent some time at Partridge Lakes in Warrington where I won the odd section but never framed. In May I came 5th (out of only 18) in the tiny Whiteacres Garbolino Festival – this was a really friendly event and definitely recommended for anyone who wants a slightly easier introduction to festivals. In September I was back there for the Maver Festival but bombed out, the only solace being a section win on Bolingey with 93lb from peg 7 (a flyer).  In between I had a couple of two-dayers at The Glebe, winning Pool 1 on one day with 124lb, plus a few visits to other venues with limited success. All told, I’ve enjoyed my fishing this year – got it right some days and wrong on (many) others.  My lesson from the year? Keep it simple.

Winsford Winter League

The other big event in our team calendar is the Winsford Winter League on the River Weaver. We are the current champions, and as far as I can recall have never finished outside the top three. We had a few problems this year though. In Round 2 (of 6) Darren Mulheir on the Marina section was estimated by the lads either side to have caught approx 17lb of roach. When the scales arrived he pulled out his net to reveal a big gash in the side, and only a few fish left in the bottom. A pike had attacked his net, unseen, during the match. His 6lb was last but one in the section. This has now happened to us twice in three years – metal keepnets next year I think.

Then on the eve of the latest match (round 6) one of our anglers was taken ill. Our spare man Steve May had already booked in and paid somewhere else, and at short notice we could not get a replacement, as the date clashed with both the Blake Hall and Heronbrook Winter Leagues. So going into the last match (last Sunday) we were lying third in the league, but only had 4 men for a 5 man team event. How did we get on?

The Final Round

Keen readers (ok, my mum if I’m lucky) will recall that I fish the Aerosol section. Typically, it is wider and slower than other sections. It is not stuffed with fish but does tend to be reasonably fair. Critically, the Aerosol is the place to be when the river is up and coloured, because the width ensures a more even, steady pace whereas narrower sections of the river (eg Marina, top of Red Lion) have boils and eddies making presentation and fish location more difficult.

I was drawn on peg 567, not one of the two end pegs but pretty similar to all the others in between. The river was coffee-coloured with some pace, but was not particularly high. It screamed skimmers, so I broke with my usual plan and decided to major on the tip. A small cage feeder with extra lead held bottom nicely at 31 turns of the reel handle. Groundbait was 50/50 brown crumb and green Swimstim, and chopped worm and dead maggot went into the mix, with a few pinkies to hopefully induce a few roach trembles to keep me active before the skimmers moved in. Starting on the tip I had my first fish, a tiny roach, after half an hour. By this time the angler to my left (my brother!) and Ken to my right had both had a skimmer each. Bear in mind you can double-hook here, so you can fish both pinkie and dead maggot. Interestingly, in my experience the point hook (the bottom one) outscores the dropper hook (the top one) by two to one.

I had also set up a 3g Cralusso Bubble for inching through the swim on the 12 metre pole, so after 30 minutes  I had a look on this having cupped in two balls of leam at the start. But to be honest it never looked right all day and I spent no more than 15 minutes on it before chucking it up the bank. So back on to the tip.

Second time on the tip things started to happen for me. I had four skimmers in four chucks before it went dead again. Interesting that I’d caught straight after resting the swim! You are caught in a bind when this happens – you need to get some feed down otherwise the anglers either side of you will nick your fish, and yet the constant crashing of a feeder on top of grazing skimmers is clearly having a detrimental effect. So I came up with a plan to alternate between bomb and cage-feeder. Basically, I had two casts with a cage feeder, followed by two casts with the bomb, then two more with the feeder, and so on for the rest of the match. By the end I had caught 14 skimmers, biggest of about 1lb, plus a handful of roach. I definitely had more fish on the bomb than on the feeder. In fishing of course, you never know whether your tactics (in this case, two feeder chucks then two bomb chucks) has optimised the return from your swim, but I felt it had been right, and on the same swim would do the same thing again.

At the all-out I hoped I’d done enough. I needed to score well to try and make-up for being one man down. By the time the scales got to my peg, with two left to weigh after me, Hazel Grove’s Bobby Birks was leading with 9lb 5oz. I knew it would be close between us, and when I tipped my fish on the scales the needle went round to …9lb 5oz. So we shared the section win, with the next best weight being Kenny’s 6lb. I could have done with one more ounce, but if I’d expected any generosity from the scalesman (my brother) I had another think coming!

The Final Positions

Back in the Red Lion pub, the rest of the Last Cast team had done pretty well, which saw us finish as second team on the day despite being an angler short. But in the real competition Hazelgrove Angling Centre emerged as league winners by a single point (209 points). They also had the top individual in Steve Mottishead. Trafford came in second (208 points), and ultimately I was pleased that we had held on to third (187 points).

It is easy to blame our failure to win Winsford this year upon our trials and tribulations – the pike attack and being a man down. But even if Darren had won Round 2 with his roach weight, and even if our missing angler had won his section on Sunday, we would probably have been one or two points light. And anyway ‘if’ is a big word – as the Dutch say “if my auntie had balls she would be my uncle”. So it’s roll-on next year, and let’s try and get our title back. Thanks to Dougie again for organising this league.

Looking Ahead

With one Winter League finishing last Sunday, the next one starts this Sunday at Cudmore, organised by Vinnie Smith. This is a 6-man event, 13 teams over 6 rounds. The lakes are New Pools 1, 3, 5, Arena, Suez and Brewsters. Cudmore is fishing well so I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll keep you posted.

Merry Christmas. These are dark days at the moment and if you are up against it, keep your chin up and may your god go with you.

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