Fleeced!

Only one match to report on this weekend, and not a particularly eventful one at that! Every year, a load of anglers from my local tackleshop go on a three day weekend away around the Thirsk area. I have been on this every year up to present, but unfortunately this year with the forthcoming Fishing4Fun Festival, and a couple of weeks in White Acres on the horizon, I couldn’t afford to go for the full three days, so instead along with my mate Chris Greensides I went upon the Saturday night, had a beer (or several) and fished the last match on the Sunday.

The lads had stopped in Ripon this year, and with the England match being on it was very busy, but we had a good night (from what I can remember) which was rounded off nicely with a Kebab at around 2 in the morning!

Five hours later and the alarm was going off for breakfast, and there were more than a couple of bleary eyed anglers around the table. Still, we made our way to the draw and the last day was at Brafferton Fishery, and from the reports we heard from another group of anglers stopping in Ripon, we didn’t have a deal to look forward to.

I did a feature at the venue a year or so ago with Neil Machin, and he absolutely emptied it, weighing in 135-0-0 of shallow caught F1’s and carp. Rumours of a fish kill over recent weeks led me to think that it wouldn’t be all that good however, and so it proved.

I drew peg 27, in the middle of an island, and to be honest I didn’t really fancy it, as the pegs on the ends of islands or in gaps had loads more room to draw fish from. With a hard match expected, I decided to base my approach around a maggot attack, and just try and catch everything that swims. I fed a line in two and a half foot of water up to the island, and one down the track. The bottom was awful though, really up and down, and it took me ages to find anywhere half decent to feed.

To cut a long and painful story short, it was dire, I couldn’t buy a bite off anything except gudgeon. I felt my decision to fish maggots was the right one given the circumstances, my logic being that with a hard match expected they would draw feeding fish of all species into the swim, which to some extent they did, I just don’t feel there were a lot of fish in the place.

I weighed 5-9-0, which was good enough for a section win. 14-0-0 won the match, which gives you an idea of just how crap it was. There was another match on the other side of the lake, and there winning weight wasn’t as high as ours. We had to laugh, as when we arrived at the venue in the morning the farmer took our pegging money at the start of the day, and then was nowhere to be seen after the match, call me cynical but I reckon he knew we weren’t going to catch ought yet was still happy to take our money, and at £6 a peg it wasn’t cheap either.

If anyone around this way is after a match, I would urge them to avoid this venue. The other lads fished two matches at The Oaks at Sessay on the two previous days, and had great matches on Maple and Alders Lakes. Winning weights were in excess of 80lb both days, with most people catching 30lb of fish. For the same amount of money, there is no comparison as to which offers a better days fishing.

As you can probably tell, people with attitudes like the farmer at Brafferton really grate on me. I know that no venue owner can guarantee good sport, as fish are living creatures and if they don’t decide to feed then they can’t be made to. That said, when consistently poor results are thrown up and a venue owner knows that a venue has lost a lot of fish, continuing to take premium amounts of money off anglers is tantamount to pulling the wool over there eyes and robbing them.

People pay £6 or more a day to fish good fisheries that hold plenty of fish, such as Lindholme, Sessay, Ranskill or any number of other places. To fish canals, or venues where they don’t expect to catch a lot of fish, the pegging fee is more like £2-£3 a day, relatively speaking you pay for what you expect to catch.

I have seen it happen before where venues have fished really hard due to fish being lost, but other venue owners choose to handle things differently. I was in the café once chatting to Neil at Lindholme when a club angler came in to complain about how hard Willows had fished after a few fish had been lost. Neil’s response was to give the club a free match at the venue, which the club angler was very happy with, so effectively Neil came out of the situation smelling of roses. I have heard from other people that Tom at Sessay has done similar things in the past when he has suffered fish losses. I suppose that that is the difference though between forward thinking venue owners and selfish farmers. That is why Lindholme and Sessay are on the map as being amongst the countries best fisheries, and why Brafferton isn’t, and never will be so long as it is under its current ownership.