Rolfs Winter league 2 - Match 2

Well its the second match of 6 today in the 2007 winter league at Rolfs in Oxfordshire

After my struggle last match for 1oz I was hoping for a better draw and a better day today

The day started off well I was up early and had the van loaded and ready to go but I was 45 mins too early so I made a coffee and put the tv on to watch the news. Then I had a great idea I could slacken off the elastics in my top kits to save me forgetting to do it on the bank again. So I grabbed the pole out of the van and adjusted all the top kits I then thought that as I had the pole out and some time to spare I would give it a bit of a clean and polish

Things were going really well until I dropped my No5 section and it landed on the edge of the coffee table and snapped clean in half and to make matters worse the section that broke off landed on the No6 and split that section too to say I was not chuffed was a bit of an understatement

Damaged area of No6 section is marked up ready to send off to Scott at Esselle Pole Repairs

While Scott has the section I'll get the 2 chips on the lower joint repaired as well
In a bit of a panic now as time is getting on I grabbed my other pole jumped into the van and shot off to Rolfs
My intention today was to fish the feeder with bread flake on the hook as my main approach and just use the pole for back up in case its hard today but un fortunately my other pole only has red hydro fitted in all the tops which isn't going to be a lot of use for catching silvers
Had I thought about it a bit more I would have picked up a waggler rod instead of the pole but its too late now
Arriving at the lake Rolf told me and Paul that Steve Wilson's car had broken down so he wouldn't be able to make it today
but Rolf had found us a replacement at short notice to take Steve's place today
Our new member Chris was fishing A section and made a cracking draw as he pulled peg 34 out of the bag
Next it was my turn to draw and there were 2 pegs left in the bag peg 10 and peg 32
I might just as well have set off for peg 10 and not bothered drawing because the way my luck was going today there was only going to be 1 out come
So it was no real surprise when I opened my hand and peg 10 dropped out
Paul had a reasonable draw with peg 25

I drew peg 10 in a match last year and spent a fishless 5 hours with the wind howling across the lake at me so as I set off round the lake to set up I wasn't in the most positive of moods



I decided to fish bread flake on the feeder out in front in the middle of the lake
and also set up a pellet line at 13m on the pole

I also set up a rig to fish maggot along the right hand bush at about 4m

Last plan of attack today is to fish to my left back into the bay behind me in front of peg 12

As you can see I cant get on the platform to fish so sitting up the bank the bay is behind the bushes to my left so its going to mean a cast over the top of the bushes to get in front of peg 12
But when Rolf came round to put the scales on the weigh station he told me that there had been fish in the bay all week so later on I might stand a chance of a few Carp

The weigh station behind peg 9

On the all in I put a small pot of pellets out at 13m and a handful of hemp at 4m in front of the bush to my right then cast out a feeder full of white crumb with a bit of bread flake on the hook and not a lot happened the guy on peg 9 hit a Carp first cast fishing bread on a feeder and the rest of us in the middle section of the lake spent an hour casting feeders and waiting for the rod to wrap round

By now the sun was out in full force and straight in my face and the wind was howling straight across the lake towards me

Not very comfortable fishing but the expectation of the rod leaping out of the rest any moment made it worth while

Ernie on peg 31 had a Carp on the feeder and the guy on peg 28 had a nice Carp of 17lb 8oz on the feeder but I sat with nowt no line bites no knocks no movement at all

Ian on peg 32 was now fishing on the pole in front of peg 33 and had landed a couple of Chub

It made it even worse that I had to sit opposite peg 32 after failing to pull it out of the bag

For the next few hours I kept on with the feeder trying bread,corn and pellet and swapping hook sizes and hook lengths but all to no avail still I couldn't buy a bite so I gave the pole a go but with the wind it was hard shipping it out and keeping it in position and when I had it in place it was almost impossible to see the float with the sun straight in my face

With an hour to go Rolf came round and sat behind me and was telling me how hard it was fishing with very few fish coming out round the lake

So I decided to give it a try in front of peg 12 and see if I could snag a Carp but after 45 mins I was still bite less

So in a desperate search for a fish I tried my 4m maggot line in the hope of catching anything for a few points but 15 mins later Rolf blew the whistle and it was all over and I had recorded my first DNW of 2007

So that was a zero points for me towards Team JCS Chris our stand-in for Steve had 13lb 4oz from peg 34 for 5 points and Paul had 8lb 8oz from peg 25 for 3 points giving us a total of 8 points and a supporting roll in the league table

Winner on the day was Steve Palmer from peg 23 with 30lb 2oz

Not a good day all-round for me broken pole no fish no points but at least it didn't rain
Still that's match fishing for ya !

There's always the next match to look forward to