The rain in Spain falls mainly in Essex !!!!!!

With the Drennan Super league approaching fast and the first round at Colemans Cottage I rang up on Monday to book me and my team mate Calvin Lawson in on the Saturday match. It’s a strange way they work the booking in and one I was not used to. You ring up and tell the answering machine you want to fish and if theres a problem they get back to you. As we were traveling 60 miles I wanted a bit of reassurance from a human rather than an answering machine and fair play I did get a call to confirm we were booked in. Before that match though, we had the Inter Services teams of 12 to fish at Monks lakes on the Thursday.

I had made a few calls and on Monday Robbie Taylor from Preston Innovations DELCAC had given me a good run down as I hadn’t been there for a while. The plan centered around casters and maggots and pellets so with that in mind I made a few phone calls to various members of our police team and said did we want to fish a team plan or did we want a death or glory approach. Most of the lads were up for a team plan so with that confirmed I now had two days to get 36 pints of casters arranged. And on that note I must thank Danson Angling, Paul Chatfield Baits, and K.C. Angling for getting me the required casters.

With that done I spent the evenings making rigs for Thursday and Saturday. Thursday arrived and a meet in the car park to sort out bait and make sure everyone had a grasp of our basic plan to fish top kit and one with maggot or worm head over caster and a further line at 13 metres shallow and on the deck with pellet depending on how the short line developed. Thankfully everyone turned up and our draw gave us peg 45 on lake 2 which is a noted flyer and a few other decent pegs. The draw put me on 103 which I knew was going to be a struggle as it was wrong end of the lake and was one out of the corner. Anyways as they say you get what you’re given so off I trotted to peg 103. I was in with peg 112 so I was fishing for a top 3 in section place I knew from the start. I set up my short rigs which consisted of 4 x 12 and 4 x 14 Trabucco CF8’s on 0.14 T1 Line to 16 Kamasan B911’s for depth and off bottom. The fish here like to come off bottom and fishing a few inches off bottom can pay at times.

I also set up CF8’s for fishing down the edge on 0.16 T1 line. I also set up a Trabucco CF9 with the same line and hook to fish long and then set up two cut down 4 x 10 Preston Chiantis with 0.14 T1 line to fish banded 6mm pellet shallow long. My bait consisted of three pints of casters, the same of maggots, a bag of the fishery 3mm hard pellets and some 6mm pellets for the hook. I started off on the top kit and one line and would love to say I caught all day and emptied it but if the truth be known it was as I expected it to be. It was a struggle to get bites and so I was forced to nick ( no pun intended ) a few fish on each of the lines. I couldn’t line them up at all. The other end of the section was fishing but no one was pulling up and trees so I persevered and was hoping my edge line would start to produce. It didn’t so my whole match was chasing bites.

I would get a few shallow long and just as I thought it was going to start producing regularly it would then die. At the end of the match I weighed in 37lb for fourth in section and although I beat them around me I was a little disappointed as a 38lb was third and I should have beaten that. A number of our blokes had taken a few fish into custody ( That’s a pun !!! ) and Phil Smith won the match from unfancied peg 83. He’d fished pellet over caster all day and had fished a blinding match. Lee Woolaston and Dave Ellis also won their sections. We finished the day third as team but picked up a few quid and had a few beers afterwards. Saturday arrived and sorting out my gear I had a bit of a thick head after a day at the racing at Epsom.

Calvin was driving us to Colemans Cottage so I sorted my gear on the drive whilst I had a strong cup of coffee. The weather was lovely and with shorts and T shirt on I threw my wet weather gear in the garage. Won’t be needing that today. Wrong !!! As soon as we left the M25 onto the A12 it started raining. I knew we were entering Essex but this was ridiculous. As we walked across the car park to the café at Colemans the locals must have thought who are these two dickheads. Some of the others had all their wet weather gear on and were gripping mugs of coffee.

Anyway we fronted it out and I had a quick chat with Simon Colclough who has bashed me up at Porth on the Dynamite Baits Festival at Whiteacres in April. He’s a top bloke and offered some advice before and after the draw. With just two of our team there Calvin was going to fish the catch anything approach and I was going to fish a bit more carp orientated approach. It was the first time either of us had seen it so I wasn’t expecting miracles but a match can give you a massive insight into a place and with the likes of Gary Miller, Chris Vandervleit, and a whole host of venue experts fishing I was hoping to learn a fair bit. I pulled out peg 19 down the bottom of Wood lake and had Chris Vandervleit to my right on 18.

I set up a couple of Trabucco CF9’s to fish long to the sunken island that runs down the middle and I also set up a couple of Trabucco CF8’s to fish at four metres where it was 6 feet deep. Both rigs had Kamasan B911’s in size 16 to 0.14 T1 line. The fish average 2-4lb so I had black J Range lastix and had a heavier H15 Preston for fishing down the edge where I had set up a CF8 to fish meat and a JRange J1 for fishing paste down the edge in 18 inches of water. I was hoping I would catch late down the edge. I started off at 15 metres to the island fishing meat over meat and chopped worm and had a few carp. I wasn’t getting bothered by silvers and was getting enough bites to keep me interested and after an hour I had around 6 carp. It then went a bit iffy and the fish seemed to be coming up in the water so I started to feed corn to try and keep them down.

This worked for a while and I was now fishing worm on the hook and although I was catching it was nowhere near quick enough. I came in over my four metre line and had a few but they were not really lined up so I made the decision to fish the last 2 and a half hours down the edge. I tried paste and meat and worm but all to no avail. They didn’t want to come in that close. At the end of the match I weighed in 38lb for nowhere but I had learnt plenty and that was what it was all about. As the weigh in was going on I shouted across the lake to Calvin asking him how he’d got on. ‘ I’ve had a few ‘ he replied. That normally means he’s got a shed load. He walked round to me and I said 105lb is winning you got that. I could tell he did and so it proved at the scales as he put 119lb on the scales to win the match.

Not bad considering he’d never seen the place. The match had been good one for us and on the way back to sunny Surrey, yes it was when we got back over the river, we had plenty to talk about. One thing we did agree on is that Colemans Cottage Fishery is superb and the good organization and friendliness of everyone was something we both commented on. I’m having a day off today ( Sunday ) and I’ll be on the phone later to see how our team got on at Passies today. Next week is the Summer League at Monks lakes so I’m hoping for a better draw and we’ve booked into Colemans Cottage for Saturday. Its busy busy at the moment but I’ll keep you posted how the lads and I at Trabucco South East are getting on.