By Colin Mercer | No Comments
Last updated: Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Sedgemoor saw the last pitched battle in England in 1685, when James II saw off the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth. It was a bloody affair. Unfortunately for the rebels, they were spotted leaving Bridgwater to take up their attack positions under the cover of darkness. The element of surprise lost, The Pitchfork Rebellion was doomed from that moment. The Somerset Levels then, provides the perfect setting for a modern battle-royale – The 2008 Pentax Division 1 National.
63 teams lined up ready to bear arms, including most of the UK’s elite fighting units – Daiwa Dorking, Drennan North West, The Barnsley Blacks, and most feared of all…Team Last Cast.

The battlefield was bordered by the Kings Sedgemoor Drain to the North (sections H, I and J) and The River Huntspill to the South (sections A to E). The winners would claim this hallowed English turf forever, whilst the losers would be driven mercilessly into the sea, drowned beneath the cruel waves of the Bristol Channel. (Am I over-dramatising this?)

After a long journey south, the band of Last Cast brothers arrived at dusk and set up base-camp at an Olde English Ale House on the outskirts of Taunton. I bade my soldiers to be seated, called over the buxom serving wench, and made our intentions clear: “Wine for my men, we ride at dawn”.

The Importance of Preparation

We were promoted from Division 2 last year, and as mentioned previously we ‘got away with’ not practicing last year, but would surely be found out if we adopted the same approach in the top flight. Unfortunately, owing to work commitments, holidays, and the long distance we had to travel (it took me 5 hours to get there on the Friday) we again had no practice. The closest most of us got was a quick glance as we drove over the venues on the M5 motorway. However, what we did have was a reasonably strong team in the shape of: Andy May, Steve May, Darren Mulheir, Sean Mulheir, Pete Keenan, Pete Jones, Neil Lloyd, Keiron Rich, Derek Willen and me (Colin Mercer).

As captain my philosophy has always been to put the best anglers on the bank that I can get. For those of you who think that team captaincy is a position of honour, glory even, let me disabuse you. Being captain involves a lot of hard work, cost and hassle. Personally, I’m okay with it (obviously, or I wouldn’t do it) but don’t underestimate the chores it involves. On the subject of thankless tasks, a big thank you to the NFA for pulling off a great match in very difficult conditions – the event was nearly cancelled on the Friday night due to the rain, wind and floods. Thanks also to Pentax, the camera people.

Next time you need a camera, why not buy a Pentax? They produce good kit, including waterproof cameras, and this is an organisation putting real money into angling when few other companies are bothering (www.pentax.co.uk). Anyway, back to the chase.

The draw was the usual big match affair – lots of familiar faces, and a sense of excitement and anticipation mixed with competitive edge. Owing to the need to get myself a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea, I found myself towards the back of the draw queue, despite getting there at 7.40am (What time do some captains arrive?!). The weather had been appalling with 31 flood warnings in operation on the morning of the match, but thanks to the EA, who had put a watch on the venues all night, the levels were looking reasonable. To be honest, they looked to be a normal level, with maybe just a tinge of colour.

As many of you will know, at a National you draw a packet of pegs which are randomly pre-allocated to your team members. I went back to my team, dished out the pegs, along with the road directions which you also get given. My team talk was, word for word: “Enjoy yourselves, and don’t fall in”.

Team Tactics

Some anglers may want a bit more guidance than that from their captain. But I decided to keep it brief for three reasons: 1) we hadn’t practiced and have no information other than that gained from Match Fishing magazine (very good by the way) and the websites, 2) an ocean of cold water has gone in over the last 24 hours, negating what little we did know, and 3) the “names” in the squad do not fish for big teams despite having been invited – mainly I think because they like to do their own thing. They get that freedom in Team Last Cast.

Next year on the Staffs/Worcester and Shropshire Union canals we will be more structured, as we will have had more practice and information (it’s an hour away for most of us). But even then our anglers will get latitude to adapt to the circumstances and use their judgement. Right or wrong, that is how we do it at Last Cast.

My Match

I found my way to my section quite easily, thanks to the good directions. (Note to NFA – never underestimate the value of the directions provided – they are vital and do much to calm the nerves in the pre-match scramble). We were all fearing long walks, and I discovered that mine was not too bad. I had drawn E49, one of the double-banked sections on the Hunstpill. I could park beyond the end of Peg 63, so I ‘only’ had to walk 14 pegs plus the distance to the first peg. Having said that, the veins in my head were pounding by the time I eventually dropped my gear at my peg. Shakespeare’s Nigel Bull was next to me, and he had practiced a few week’s earlier further up the stretch, and felt there could be a few bream around.

My first look at the peg was not too encouraging. It was essentially similar to all the others, but it had some awkward marginal reeds out to about 8 metres, with only a very narrow channel through. I got in with a weed cutter to try and widen it but it was too deep to do it properly. If I was going to fish the tip, the first few yards of my line would have to lie on top of this marginal weed.

I have great faith in balling it in on big silver fish venues, and mixed up my pole line groundbait – one bag Gros Gardons, one bag Noire, half bag Lake 3000. My tip groundbait was 1 bag Swimstim and half a bag of Lake 3000. Everyone was saying that the river would be still for the first two hours, and from 1.00pm would start pulling like hell. I found 5 ft at 13m, and set up a 0.6g rig for no flow, and 1.5g and 2g rigs for when it really started moving. I left plenty of line above the floats so I could lay line on the deck, and follow the rig down the swim if I needed to. I also set up a very light 0.2g rig for the 4ft of water I found just over the marginal reeds to my right. I fancied this for a decent perch, eel or tench.

My tip rig was a small cage feeder (not taped up like everyone else seemed to have) with a 2 ft tail and size 16 hook. Although I fixed a big cage on to start in order to get some gear in. At the all-in, I was nearly ready – remarkable for me. On the whistle I shipped the pole out, and put 10 babies heads in. One fell a metre short but better this side than the other. I brought the pole in, and chucked 8 feederfuls out to half way. I never used to put bait on the hook on these initial feeder chucks, wanting to avoid hook-length twist on the constant cast and retrieve. But when I put bait on last time at Porth, I had a 6oz skimmer as soon as it hit deck, so I put on a worm section and a dead read maggot today and hoped for a repeat performance. Of course, no such luck.

After these quick 8 chucks, the moment of truth. I put a flouro pinkie (the bait I would put my life on for roach) on the 0.6g float rig, and shipped out. It buried straight away, and I bumped a small fish. Dropped in again, 30 seconds later, float went under. I brought in a tiny (one inch) roach, but at least the blank was avoided. Over the next few minutes I had some iffy bites, and landed two micro-perch. The bait seemed to be getting intercepted by minnows, and the rig didn’t look right, so I swapped to the 1.5g rig (I know – 1.5g in 5ft of still water!) with double red maggot. A 3oz roach was my instant reward. “Happy Days” I thought, this is right up my street. And then it happened. Or didn’t happen, to be more precise. No more bites. Nothing.

Barnsley Blacks’ Andy Kinder further up the far bank deepened the gloom, as he slipped the net under what looked like an early 1.5lb skimmer on the tip.

Desperate Measures

I tried all sorts of tweaks, changing depths, spreading shot to pick up the tiny bit of flow, even dragging the float ‘downstream’ in a very unnatural way (it can work on the Weaver) but nothing. I was now about an hour in, with maybe 4 oz in the net. I switched down to a 22 hook, attached a toss-pot to my pole tip, and started drip feeding in pinkies, lowering my pinkie hookbait amongst them. The result was a quick bite (tiny perch) followed by two more over the next 20 minutes. Going nowhere fast.

It was time to try the 7m marginal line that I had fed with a bit of choppie and dead maggot. An instant bite here produced a 2oz perch, followed by a 1/2oz perch, followed by nothing. Not quite the bonus eel or tench I had hoped for. We were now about 2 hours in and I was getting desperate. In “The Hustler”, after 18 hours of continual pool playing, veteran Fats is on the end of a beating from young upstart Fast Eddie. Fats is nearly out of money, nearly beaten. He calls a break, goes to the toilet, and gives himself a thorough wash. He looks in the mirror, draws a line under what has happened, and goes back out for round two. In the ensuing hours he turns the game round, and breaks Fast Eddie. I have found that taking a similar approach when struggling can definitely help.

So I got up, went for a pee, drank a bottle of water, and thought about what I was going to do.

I decided I had to make the pole work. A bit of flow had picked up (the much publicised tanking-through never materialised) so I decided to go for bonus fish on the 13m line. I cupped in some maggots, and held my 1.5g rig back hard on the deck. It didn’t work. The only response was when I let the 1.5g rig drag through – this got me 3 small ruffe.

Meanwhile the bloke opposite had a decent eel on the pole, and Andy Kinder had another two smaller (but still very welcome) fish on the tip. I concluded after 3 hours there were no fish on the pole line. It started raining (lashing down).

Bank walkers were saying most people had “a pound and a half”. I had to top myself, or go on the tip.

Please, please go round

After a few chucks, I didn’t like the way my rod was pointing, so I changed position and put my tip rod to the left, which gave me a slightly better bend in the tip. I went out with a small worm section and dead red on the hook. And prayed. After 20 minutes, two quick twangs on the tip saw me lift into something, I suspected a skimmer. I played it like my life depended on it, but what broke the surface was an 8oz perch. That’ll do.

Back out again and 10 minutes later the tip pulled round slowly, and a gentle lift put me in contact with another fish – definitely a skimmer this time. Just as it reached the marginal reeds, a sudden gut-wrenching lunge made my heart miss a beat, but it stayed on, and I netted a 12oz skimmer. I started to relax a bit, and now had a plan for the rest of the match (stay on the tip) which enabled me to take a few chances elsewhere, so I started loose feeding maggots (quite heavily) on the 13m pole line. Another half hour on the tip saw no return, so I allowed myself 10 minutes to try my two pole lines – the 13m maggot line and the 7m choppy line that I had also continued feeding.

Two micro roach on the 13m line, combined with no signs at all on the 7m line, had me back on the tip within my 10 minute time frame. 50 minutes to go. On the feeder I rang the changes with the bait, trying a combination of worm, red and white maggot, but with no further indications. Just to try something different, I swapped the cage feeder for a 1/2oz bomb, with double dead red maggot, and chucked it out over the same feeder line. It hadn’t settled 2 minutes, when a clear bite made me lift into my third and final tip fish. Another skimmer of 6oz was very welcome, and saw me end the match on the tip.

Tale of the Tape

At the all out I was exhausted. I tackled down, and spoke to Nigel Bull. He was admitting to 1.5lb, and so was I. When the scales arrived they had already weighed pegs 32 to 48 and I could see there were some low weights. (What had happened to all the 1.5lb’s the bank walkers were talking about?!). I put 1.1kg on the scales, and was happy with that. Nigel next door pulled out a very similar looking net, which went 1.18kg. Damn. But further along there were some more nearly-empty nets. When I got back to the car, I reckoned that of the 25 weights I’d seen, maybe 8 had beaten me, so averaging that out across 63 pegs, I estimated maybe 40 points. Of course, such estimates can be way-out – the other half of the section could have bagged up.

On the phone driving back to the draw, first to ring me was Neil Lloyd who was estimating “top-half”. Andy May rang to say he and Steve had done OK but not brilliant. News from elsewhere was mixed, with some saying they’d struggled. But I have learnt that different anglers respond in very different ways in this situation. Often, “strugglers” turn out to have done ok, and those who thought they had done ok have scored less well. In reality, it is very difficult to know, because no-one has the full picture. That is what makes the final result announcement exciting. That said, I was pretty sure we hadn’t done enough to feature in the top 10.

And so it proved. Keiron had top-scored for us with 61 points from a maximum 63 – an impressive performance where he fished waggler down the middle, catapulting balls of groundbait over the top, to land 6kg. But most of our results were between 30 and 40 points, resulting in us finishing 22nd out of the 63 teams. I had got 50 points, better than I had estimated.

On reflection, not a bad effort considering the distance the venue is away from us, and the conditions. Top 10 would have felt like success. We were 32 points away from this, which doesn’t sound much but in reality is something of a gap. Worthy winners were Starlets with a consistent team performance. Equally impressive was the performance of second place team Garbolino Harrisons Lincs who pushed Shakespeare into third and Daiwa Dorking into fourth. Drennan North West were 14th and Barnsley Blacks were 16th. There were plenty of other good teams who finished down the table, so 22nd will have to do for now.

Team fishing is a funny old game. You are hugely exposed as an angler, the results are in the paper, and if you score poorly you feel you have let others down. But it also brings a camaraderie and a sense of achievement like no other branch of the sport. Go on then, we’ll give it another year.

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