Swings and Roundabouts!

It’s been a real roller-coaster of a weekend for me folks, finally breaking me duck up at Barlborough, but really copping one in the nuts on Sunday at bank end! So, here goes.

Due to a club match, the Saturday open at Barlborough was split over two lakes, the usual Island Lake and a section on Bluebell Lake which sits charmingly placed among the woods that give the venue it’s ‘Woodlands Farm’ name. Ian and myself were taken on a guided tour of this lake before the match by Chris Dyson, one of the Saturday regulars, and assured that the lake had potential, indeed the previous Saturday the winner had come from the end peg on there. Bluebell is currently undergoing something of a facelift, owner Pete Glossop is redeveloping the lake, making it shallower and the depths more consistent, and as such the levels have been lowered, leaving the platforms high and dry some six feet above the surface.

We all agreed that it wouldn’t be very comfortable on the quite steeply sloping banks, but with Chris’s assurances of a decent days sport, we set off to the draw queue, all secretly hoping for a peg on the Island Lake.

Now all this ‘preamble’ is simply to set the scene! As we were in the draw queue I turned to Ian and remarked that surely it was my turn for a crack at peg 36, end peg on the island, which was proving unbeatable in all the recent matches. I was second in the bag, and peg 36 stuck in my mitt! Since I’ve been writing this blog, it would be easy to think I just turn up and draw well, then wait for my envelope after the match, and I must admit I’ve had one hell of a run of late! But seriously, stick with it, you’ll soon be reading my lame-duck excuses about how I’ve ballsed-up another flyer! It’s a nice thought, but my run can’t last forever, so it’s a case of making the most of it while it lasts. Amid the comments of ‘jammy b*****d’ and ‘spawny f****r’ I set off over the bridge and placed my gear on peg 36.

The peg was alive with carp, from bank to bank, raising concerns that they may be spawning in the peg. The thrashing reeds to my right seemed to confirm this, and my enthusiasm began to wane a little. During the winter, all too often you are driving home thinking you’ve spent five or six hours trying to catch fish from an empty peg, which you can just about put right in your own mind, but spring and early summer brings a totally different scenario into being, and probably the worst one of all, the peg full of fish that don’t want to feed, and this is what I was facing today!

For company next door I’d got Roy Hanson, another Saturday regular with a good record at the venue, and just to up the ante a little, he’s a staunch Sheffield Wednesday fan! Anyone who knows me will know I’m not exactly fond of our blue & white cross-town rivals, but Roy’s a long time mate of mine so the banter was kept to a friendly level! We both knew though, that an aquatic Steel City Derby was about to take place over the next few hours! I set up a million top kits as usual (trying to make it look as though I knew what I was doing!) covering shallow silvers, skimmers down the track and rigs for the carp at various depths across. On the midweek match I’d struggled to make any impression on the carp over on the far bank when I’d fed & fished meat, so that was put on the back burner for a while and I reverted back to my old favourite, chopped worm and caster. My reasoning for this was it would catch everything, and should the carp let me down (as was looking quite likely) I would still be able to put some fish together.

Roy was first on the scoresheet, with a carp on meat from across, at the same time as I lost my first foul hooker. As he went two-nil up, my float shot under with my first proper bite of the day, and a 2lb carp was safely in the sprout bag. Things went from bad to worse from then on though, as a series of foul-hooked fish made their escape, and nothing I could do would bring me a proper bite, except for the odd rudd & roach that got to the worm before the carp could snag themselves on my hook!

These silvers were later to be my salvation, but at the time all I could think was that they were nuisance fish, especially as Roy now had five carp to my one! I tried to work a line at 5 metres to catch the rudd & roach shallow, a method which I’ve had quite a bit of success with at Barlborough of late, but the trouble was the carp were everywhere, and unsettling the silvers, making it difficult to put any number together. Half way through the match, and I was staring a proper beating in the face, Roy had moved on to eight carp, two of which were from his margin swim, and were quite a bit bigger than the others. I now had three, one of which was a good three pounds, a big F1 by any water’s standards, and decided to plug away at the far bank, picking off the silvers and hoping for a carp to have a chew. No-one seemed to be catching, a couple of lads had been for a walk down to the Bluebell lake and the lads down there were struggling as well, so I was looking good for a place, perhaps second.

During the last hour, I began to pick up the odd F1 in between the roach, and my weight began to grow. By this time, Roy was chasing the odd surface feeding fish with bread hookbait, and when he snared two in quick succession I thought the writing was on the wall, even though I had a strong finish with two F1’s in the last five minutes. I ended the match with 10 carp, losing 8 or 9 over the course of the match, while Roy was admitting to 12.

Top weight on the two lakes when the scales reached us was 22lb 14oz from the middle of Bluebell Lake. Roy and me both knew we’d beaten that, but strangely he seemed to think I had more than him? Let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t have taken him up on a pound side bet before the fish went on the scales, that’s how convinced I was that he’d done me! 34lb 5oz looked to be far too rich for my blood, especially as my carp net went 25lb 8oz. I’d reckoned on about 5-6lb in my silver fish net, but when I lifted them out there was more, but even then I didn’t think there would be enough to make it any more than respectable. I was more than surprised to see the needle bump round to 9lb exactly, and my scowl soon turned to a smile when I realised I’d heard Roy’s weight wrong, I’d got 35.4 in my head, when he’d actually weighed 34.5.

I’d finally broken my hoodoo at Woodlands, stretching back to the turn of the year when I’d not been able to draw near any fish, right up to present, when I was drawing but not feeling I’d done the pegs justice. AND, I’d kept the red & white flag flying high! Lets just hope our boys can do the same when battle commences again in August!

The big smile was still in evidence on Sunday at Bank End, as I left the café on my way to peg 13, spot on, or so I thought. One of the regulars, Scamp, had been there on a club match the day before, and informed me that all the weights had come from further along the bank, in pegs 6-11. He’d drawn 12 on that match and struggled for the first hour, and sorted it but was too far behind to make any real impact. Shallow fishing is the name of the game here, be it floating feeder, wag, pole or the dreaded FP, and that was how I set my stall out.

I did feed a small amount of pellets at 5 metres with a view to going in with a paste rig, but never got to have a look, as I was into fish from the off on the floating feeder. My mate Ian was next door on peg 12, and he started strongly too, also on the floating feeder. It seemed that the shoal was drifting between us, as he’d get a few then I would, so I was looking for a fallback line in case the carp got spooky with the pressure. A quick ten minutes on the floating pole (ok, ok, I know I said it was a crap method!) brought only three fish, no bigger than the ones I was catching on the feeder, so it went up the bank.

Actually, my excuse is, I wasn’t fishing the floating pole, I was washing the worm juice off it from the day before! This was to prove costly, as by this time Ian had nicked all the fish, leaving me to start again. That set the tone for the rest of the match, neither of us daring to try anything different in case we lost the fish to the other. Ian had a spell where he seemed to be losing a fair percentage of the fish he hooked, while at the same time I had a bit of a purple patch and felt I’d pegged him back to pretty much even stevens. Both pegs got stronger as we went into the last hour, and as the whistle went we had our usual game of ‘tha’r’s got more than me’, you know the one, it’s too close to call between you and your neighbour, and you both try and convince the other one that they’ve got more fish than you, so you can say ‘told you so’, while walking away cursing under your breath!

I’d a feeling I’d more fish than Ian, but he’d had a little run of better fish late on, so couldn’t be sure. I’d volunteered to help Andrew the owner weigh in as his son and co-owner David was away on holiday, and arrived at the early pegs to witness the last net of the end peg going back. ‘108lb’ called Andrew as the buggy he has the scales mounted on trundled off to the next angler. He weighed 75lb, and was more than pleased at his first time at the venue. His face dropped a little when he eventually turned out to be LAST in the section with that weight! The lad next door weighed 89lb; the regular framer Dean Foster put 109lb on the scales to take pole position, which he held for all of five minutes, as another regular, Steve Rylance net door posted what turned out to be the winning weight with 119lb. Steve had found some of the venue’s elusive lumps on paste fished short, with three fish going 26-27lb on their own. They take some pulling back when the average fish is less than a pound! Next up was the first man in our section, John Lindley, who pipped me at the post for first a few weeks ago on the feeder, again from the opposite end of the section.

John and me have drawn next to each other a few times over the winter, and he calls me his jinx because he’s never beaten me next door, but put him in my section and that’s me finished! I was hoping today would see me gain revenge for the other week, but his 93lb was looking very ominous! Ian reckoned I had a ton, and probably enough to win outright, but after the previous couple of times I’d been and fished the floating feeder I wasn’t so sure. You seem to have a busy day, one a bung, but the stamp of the fish just doesn’t seem to be big enough for some reason? Ian was reckoning on 115 fish, and that I’d got 130-140, so it could be close.

When his fish went 75lb I felt I was on rocky ground, and so it proved, my final tally coming up at 90lb 3oz, 3lb short of the section! To say I was gutted would be an understatement! I’d gone flat out for six hours, almost one a bung, the lad on the other side weighed 27lb and I’d not even won the section! On the way home we analysed the day, and I wondered if the brief spell spent ‘washing my pole’ had cost me? Ian tended to think not, he’d stuck at it for the duration and matched me fish for fish, losing out only because he’d had a higher percentage than usual come unstuck. We both agreed that we could have been driving home with just about the same weights, but rueing the fact that we’d not had a look on the pole lines, so it was swings and roundabouts really I suppose?

One thing I think everyone would agree on though, is what a venue the match lake at Bank End is, 75lb for last in the section, 90lb not winning the next section, and just for good measure the lowest section winning weight was 76lb! When you see these amounts of fish caught in summer, you realise just how many fish there are in the place, and it keeps you at it in the coldest days of winter, knowing that the fish can’t be too far away.

Busy week again this week for the little fat lad, Mandy’s lined me a few jobs up in the garden and round the house, and there’s the airport run to fetch our kid back, but I’m at Barlborough again Saturday, then Straight Mile on Sunday with the Turners arms gang. I’m reliably informed that it’s a worm job for the venue’s healthy chub population, which should prove a welcome change! Till next time, tight lines!