Barford where there normal helpful and accommodating selves, reducing the number of pegs, dictating the match times and generally forgetting that we are the customers so only the first 14 names on the list where eligible to fish. Therefore the knockout etc has been put off till the next match when all members who are still in can fish.
This match report is a variation from the normal as we are going to concentrate and pay tribute to one of our club who has become a legend in his own life time, has devoted his entire life to fishing, and to try and give everyone an insight into just how much you need to put in to become a match winner.
This is a man we has had a prominent Doctor at the local Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries developing a bait for him to use, then has been practicing on local waters fine tuning and developing the bait further. Even down to working out that it needs to be micro waved for a minute or two on full power to harden the outside and prevent smaller fish taking the bait.
He has had a trolley special adapted to carry his fine tuned and specialist angling equipment, but still makes 3 trips to the car to enable his vast array of tackle and bait to be transported to his peg, then forgets his cloth and has to borrow one from the peg next door.
With the match on Barford starting at Ten he had worked out that he need not start fishing until 11.30 otherwise he would catch to many fish and as he is maturing in age may be to tired to continue till the end of the match. This was proven when fishing at Topcroft on Thursday testing the “new bait” as he caught 2 to 3 times as many fish as anyone else fishing on the lake. He had worked out that the cooking time needed to be 67 seconds so as to harded the outer skin and prevent the smaller fish taking the bait, this enabled him to target fish in the 8 – 10 lbs bracket. Extra problems have been encountered in the “cooking” as our as yet unnamed anglers wife is not to keen on him using her micro wave for bait so this process has to be carried out when she is out of the house and he has to double quick time his window cleaning duties to enable the cooking to take place and the evidence cleared away before the wife returns.
As the Barford match progress the anglers on the other side of the lake from another club where amazed at our members reactions, several times the angler on the peg opposite was heard to say “you have got a bite mate” as our club member chose to ignore his rod tip swinging round nearly pulling from the rest knowing it was a inferior fish and maintaining his match plan to target the bigger fish.
As the match drew to a close he was quietly confident he had done enough, he had previously told his pairs partner Wayne “The Don” Moore to ease back when he had got over 10lbs as to not make it to embarrassing for the rest of the club members. His master plan nearly backfired when in trying to raise his position within the exclusive “Wallys Mates Club” he gave or team leader some of the aforementioned bait, but thankfully not to much.
Who is this man I hear you cry, I did not relies we had such a dedicated angler in our mist is another cry we can here, it is the one and only our own Nigeee.
The master plan and all the bait and tackle development finally paid of with a individual match winning total of 33lbs 4ozs Nigee carried his partner 12lbs 4ozs Wayne Moore to victory in the pairs with 45lbs 8ozs, working out his fish ratio to near perfection beating team leader Wall 22lbs 8ozs and Paul Chilvers 19lbs 8ozs combined weight 42lbs into second place.
It is a privilege to few of us realize to fish along side someone who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of fish and who we are all to often to keen to take the p_ss out of the old boy, it is a an honour for us all and we could all learn so much from the master.
May your nuts always be hard !!!
The other bank.
