Scratching Around!

Saturday saw round four of the Ranskill teams of four league, and from what I heard in terms of how the venue had fished the previous week, it was going to be a tough one! Our skipper Mark Holmes had been on a midweek match and blanked, along with another two of the five anglers that had fished! A 4lb weight had won the match, and that was when five anglers had the lake to themselves, so its fair to say I was far from optimistic!

I drew peg 30 which is something of an all or nothing draw- and it was a nothing kind of day. I opted to fish long pole with bloodworm, as often there are a few skimmers to be caught around the area, and I also planned to chuck a bomb out and a maggot feeder to see if any carp or ide were in the area.

To cut a long story short, nothing worked for me, I couldn’t muster a bite over my bloodworm, and my tip refused to budge with the feeder in open water, or the bomb which I threw to the island in front of me. I say refused to budge, it did move once in what I thought was a ‘carpy’ liner, I left it, and then it happend again, you can imagine my dismay then when I struck into a two ounce roach! Then again, I must admit I was slightly relieved just to avoid the blank! I ended up with two ide and two roach for 15oz, which put me fifth in my nine peg section. To be fair, all the top end of the lake fished shocking, with a couple of anglers blanking!

Well done to Rotherham Paving who won the day with an impressive 5 point tally, including three section wins and the individual match winner in Zac Lawton. They have set themselves up as the team to beat, with a ten point lead over their nearest rivals after just two rounds! Mind you, those Rotherham lads can’t half draw, they only went and pulled the same four pegs that had won the match the previous round!

 Lindholme Winter League

That night, the temperature dropped down to minus six, and it took me a good ten minutes to defrost the car the following morning! Matt’s road was like an ice rink, but fortunately we managed to get to the breakfast place in one piece- just!

We arrived at the venue to see venue owner Neil Grantham smashing the ice on the lakes with his digger, and all the anglers were huddling together for warmth in the draw queue. Despite the conditions, there was a good turnout however with 79 anglers lining the banks, and with the usual host of stars it looked set to be a really good- if difficult- match.

I stuck my hand in the back and pulled out peg 30 once again- this time though it was on Bonsai, in a reasonable area. I had some good uns to beat however with Trent legend John Allerton to my right, and England youth star Danny Uxley to my left, and with Johnny Kenning also in my 10 peg section. Lee Kerry had drawn John Allertons peg a couple of weeks previous, so I put a call in to him to find out how he would plan to attack it, he confirmed what I was thinking anyway- a long pole approach with maggots and pellets being the way to go.

After twenty minutes my float slid away- I was the first person out of everyone I could see to get a bite. You can imagine my embarassment then when I struck only to find that my line was wrapped around the end of my pole, and my rig snapped! Gutted!

I had to wait an hour for another bite, but when it came fortunately it ended up in the onion sack, and from what I could see the fish would be worth good points, as there weren’t may people catching. The day turned in to a real waiting game, feeding two or three maggots and waiting up to half an hour for a bite, but if I worked my bait enough I always seemed to get one. John and Danny were struggling either side however, and I couldn’t think of anything to do to up my catch rate, as feeding can be the touch of death for F1’s when the weather is cold, so I just kept plodding away.

I ended up with nine F1’s, which weighed 15lb. Fortunately this was enough for the section win and sixty beer tokens for me and Sir Matt to share. To give an idea of just how hard it was, John Allerton finished second in my section 5lb, and Steve Rothery won the section to the left of ours with just 3lb, in fact my 15lb was good enough for 6th on the match! That’s proper tough by Lindholme standards! Hopefully next week I will be able to tell of a few more fish being caught. Tight Lines until then