Mick Parkinson reports on the weekend’s Town Welland meet, which attracted the brothers Vincent…
EARLIER this year I arranged a meet on the Town Welland in Spalding for TF users, it went well and those that fished wanted a go at it again.
This time though I watched how the river was fishing and tried it a bit different, we fished before Christmas and made it a fur and feather type of event.
I also got help, no not that sort of help, help from good friends! I started up the list of names, Arnie and Spankie sorted out the draw place for brekkie and the pub for the presentation, while Andy Wilson sorted out pegs and scales and his wife helped on the day to take photos.
Not only that, everyone who attended bought some cracking prizes for what turned out to be a fun raffle.
The raffle happened after we found out we had a bill of £36 to pay for the buffet done for us in the pub after.
It was going to just be, pick peg numbers out of a hat and collect a prize, yet the raffle did well enough to pay for the buffet and leave £20. Which we all decided would go towards the charity money collected for down syndrome kids, a match being organised by Philmynet later next year.
Not only did all this happen but new user Hotrod asked me if two of his friends could fish, Dave and Mick Vincent!
So they did and honourably didn’t bother with the pools. It was a pleasure to fish with them for me and for the others.
So how did it fish? The river had been clear, not gin clear but clear enough to have an impact on the sport, if there were a bit more colour I’d of said the fish might have been spread out a bit more. It forecast being overcast in the night and throughout the day we were fishing, so this helped and probably helped in stopping an expected frost.
So we all drew at the café after a superb breakfast at Rumblings café in Spalding, mega plateful and served with a smile too! Crusty drew peg 3 which was the first peg and the peg that saw 37lb a few weeks previous in a club match, fishing 4m to hand, hemp and tares! Crusty was on it today though….
The pegs outside the ‘Poacher’ pub were drawn by Hotrod, Minime and Adam, good pegs usually and ones you’d normally run too.
At the tax office bridge, one side was Nick Palmer, the other Dave Vincent, another two good pegs, with Dave Vincent on probably the better of the two, almost always produces good bags.
When we eventually arrived at our pegs, Spalding’s one way roads and daft turnings meant some took longer to get to their pegs and we agreed that we’d start when everyone was ready.
Last to my peg, 2 rigs set up and I went for a walk to see if all was well and what time we could say was best to start.
Cutnut was last to his peg as he’d helped Minime get settled down the bank,
Bugger, it was 10am already and they’d started, no time to wait, I gave a shout, a bit of a feeble shout apparently as I got a text saying so, LOL.
After getting back to my peg I thought I’d try something new today, fishing hemp and trying to catch on it from the off. With the help of Ray Malles liquidised hemp (Adam laughed at this) I tried to kick start my swim, right down the middle with no other lines used.
Maybe the clear water will see the fish congregate in the middle more as they usually do on the Wide Welland.
It worked to some effect and I’d had 30 fish in the first hour on hemp. My neighbour to my right John McCartney had only had 10 or so fish and to my left Nick Palmer seemed to be struggling too, then again I’ve seen him fishing before and I think it’s just his style, lol.
The pegs to the right of me, opposite the ‘Poacher’ were really struggling, a big surprise there as they’re normally good pegs.
With capable anglers on these pegs it became apparent that the fish just were not in them pegs. Not good either when before the whistle, these pegs had already packed up.
What showed the fish shoaling up tight was that Hotrod had packed up and Matt was catching well, confessing to around 70 fish after a few hours. There were others catching though, Andy on end peg was supposedly catching good roach and quicker than most, as was Jono and Dave Vincent. Thins seemed quiet from the other end though, I’d not heard from Crusty, Mick, Cutnut and LAL.
Later on we found that Cutnut had been doing some rather dodgy feeding in his swim and Mick Vincent found this a little funny. Cutnut has been trying to blame it on the locals feeding the ducks large loafs of sliced bread…… honestly though it can be a good peg sometimes, it just can get a bit hairy if anyone who wants to feed the already overweight ducks yet more bread. They charge from all directions to just a couple of slices going in and it can be chaos sometimes and noisy too, lol.
So when the weigh in came, some were relieved, some were quite excited and we had a few double weighs for some people as the scales couldn’t handle more than 20lb in one go!
Peg 3 Crusty 6lb 2oz
Peg 4 LAL 14lb
Peg 5 Mick V 28lb 2oz Punch close in
Peg 7 Pete P 7lb 9oz
Peg 8 Matt 10lb 1oz
Peg 9 Hotrod DNW
Peg 10 Minime DNW
Peg 11 Adam DNW
Peg 12 John Mc 6lb 5oz
Peg 13 Mick P 18lb 3oz Hemp/middle
Peg 14 Nick P 10lb 12oz
Peg 15 Dave V 26lb 13oz Punch close in
Peg 16 Jono 15lb 14oz
Peg 17 Andy W 30lb 7oz Punch close in 1st
Just worth mentioning that some people didn’t turn up, so before the draw I took out pegs to tally with the amount fishing.
One of the pegs I took out was pleasure fished two hours into the match by one of the locals. In 3 hours he’d had an estimated 30lb of roach already!
As you can see catching close worked well and the punch was favourite bait on the day.
“With the clear water and pike moving for fish, catching quick on the whip close in kept things in order and meant a faster catch rate,” said Dave Vincent.
That’s the way the day went for the better weights and those with plenty of fish in front of them, whip or top four close in to hand.
Sometimes this yields plenty of smaller roach, while the hemp gives better fish yet today the better roach didn’t really show. Usually using tares would of found them, not on the though! That’s fishing eh….
Thanks again to everyone that made the effort and to those that went the extra mile, your all stars and I was proud to of had a day in your company.
See you all again next time
Mick209
Pictures from the match can be viewed on the club site at www.total-fishingclub.com
