Lucky Luggage!

After last weeks blog full of doom, gloom and depressing results it is nice to be able to start this weeks with some tales of joy for a change.

I received some new luggage courtesy of Mosella last week, and before I say anything else I must sing its praises. I’m not just saying this because I am sponsored by them, it truly is the best luggage I have ever got my hands on. The material is thick and robust, the zips are the best I have ever seen, and the design makes it easy to carry everything all in one go.

I must admit, before I got it I was a figure of ridicule, as I looked like a bit of a tramp on the bank. I had some old Shimano luggage I bought second hand about three years ago. This carried my pole, I had a Milo ready rod case housing my feeder rods, my carryall couldn’t fit my pole rollers in it so I carried them on top, and I had a separate Maver bait bag.

With the Mosella luggage all this is gone, as the roller bag and the bait bag are designed to fit inside the carryall, and the holdall has the ready rod carryall built into it making life, as the meerkat would say, Simples!

Lucky Luggage

Another great thing that comes with the mosella luggage is good luck- or at least it did for me, I won the first two matches I fished when I had it on the bank!

The first was at Wiremill Dam, a place I fished a lot as a youngster, but somewhere I haven’t been a lot in recent years. It has recently been taken over by Chris Keeling, who has done a great job of tidying the place up. It is probably the best roach venue I know, So I decided to base my attack around catching the redfins on the pole.

With 17 anglers putting in an appearance there was a good turnout, and with the venue being relatively small we didn’t have a lot of room.

I was into small roach from the off, and from what I could see there wasn’t a great deal being caught, so I plodded on. I was catching them between a foot and 18 inches deep, and ringing the changes with the depth kept bigger fish coming.

I also managed a bonus bream and ide on a short line I fed on my top 4 . One thing I did learn is that I didn’t take nearly enough bait, I fed a pint and a half of maggots, and I could have easily fed 4 pints if I had had enough with me, and I reckon I could have caught nearly twice as much. The more I fed, the more I caught.

Fortunately though, the 23-00 I caught was enough to take the honours, and the winner take all pot that went with it.

Double Trouble

The following night was the usual weekly open match at Carterhall, and I was pleased to draw peg 15, the same peg I had been on the previous week. Now was the time to put right where I went wrong and win from the peg instead of coming second!

I fished maggots on the long pole shallow, choosing to fish away from the island instead of up to it as I did the previous week. This worked a treat, and after a slow start I was putting a good ide in the net every chuck. I was really having to blast the maggots in to keep them feeding though, I was basically having to draw the fish off the island, but once they were there they fed very confidently.

My young nemesis Jake Dye was also catching well however and had also taken an early carp, and I knew I would have to keep fish coming to beat him. I ended up with abut 50 ide, and when the scales arrived, they pulled them round to 33-12-0. This was enough to beat Jakes 27-2-0 effort and win the match.

Back Down to Earth…

On Sunday, I decided to take a trip to Hallcroft, and I wish Id never bothered. The wind was against me, and I couldn’t present my bait properly, but I still fished a bad match, trying to make my shallow and margin lines work and neither of them did. I ended up with two skimmers a roach and a perch. Awful business!