2002 / 2003

 I was, as I often am without team matches, debating about if to fish this weekend and if so where. Well that decision became an easy one when I started to feel ill on Wednesday and got progressively worse till Friday, it wasn't covid (according to the LF tests) but I had a sore throat, sinuses blocked, chesty cough and my back muscles ached terribly. Feeling better today thankfully just the "tubes" need clearing now and again. That now means I won't be fishing before Christmas as I was not planning to go next weekend, and my next match will be Monday 27th December.

It's been a while that I have looked back on my diaries, and to be honest I took a while finding where I had put them, and when I last written about. It is now 1st December 2002, nothing to say other than fished a Bristol & West Xmas match and got drawn on a peg at Jack Whites where I think a tree or two reside on the bottom, snag pit and DNW...

My next match was Dec 15th, an ATWL round on the K&A Canal outside Bath, I was drawn at Diggers Yard (a stretch we don't really fish now due to lack of access). I really struggled to start with on the bread and was thinking this was going to be poor match, but luckily for me I caught small roach later on bloodworm & joker. I had two areas that I caught from, one next to a boat on the inside, and at 10m going up the shelf. I weighed in 3lb 12oz and that was enough to bag me a section win for the team.

29th December and the next ATWL again on the K&A canal but my draw this time placed me at Darlington which is just on the edge of Bath itself. I didn't have a problem getting bites on punch bread on this match, but they were all small roach taken from 10m out. I had 2 hours on this, and when it died I went onto my bonus fish lines (1 worm, 1 caster) and had nothing at all. In fact after I scraped a few more small fish out on bloodworm at 5m my peg died and I caught nothing the last hour or so. I was surprised to find I had won the section with just 3lb 3oz. It was a nice end to 2002 and November and December had been pretty good for me, was 2003 going to be the same or a different matter?

I don't have any pictures of back then, so here's a random picture of me and some carp a few years ago.

The last round of the ATWL on the 5th Jan 2003 was moved from the river to the canal due to the fact the river had flooded badly, burst its banks and in Keynsham was in the marina car park, that's high! Just to make the fishing on the canal harder the temperatures dropped and minus 6 degrees greeted us Sunday, yuk! I was drawn at the George section, and the writing was on the wall when I had no bites on anything for 2 hours! I finally found a tiny pocket of tiny ruffe / perch and scratched out 12 of them for just 6oz. I beat the guys either side but the other end of the section had 3 and 4lb weights so I was well down the section. This was though a good day as my team won the day and we won the league overall, I got a bit of extra coin as I was runner up in the knockout and 6th individual overall.

I had my next match 26th Jan (snow and cold weather kept me off the bank in between) at Hill View in a team league where I had peg 75 on the 3rd canal handed to me. Feeding just 4 maggots at a time I had 18lb 13oz of small carp, 4th in section but somehow I recorded that I piced up some money, probably went halves with someone lol. Two weeks later the same result but this time on Heron lake with just 14lb, not going well here.

The last Commercial House round was held on Feb 16th (must have been postponed a few times) and was on the Bristol Avon at Chippenham. I was told I was pegged next to the Blue Bridge, that meant nothing as I had no experience of this part of the river. When I got to the Blue Bridge I could not find my peg, I had Kev Boltz above me and Pete Philips below me, and I said "they've left my peg out!" What I soon found out was that my peg was on the opposite bank to everyone else, hmmm that was a first for me lol. I was trepidatious setting up, being pegged right next to footbridge was bound to bring lots of pedestrians and who knows what. In the event I had a few idiots as you would expect, and a dog that nearly broke my rod, the owner threatened to fill me when I had a moan..... I set up a 6 no4 stick float to fish down the middle of the river and a maggot feeder. I had 2 hours of bites on the stick but only caught tiny fish, all went dead and the feeder was no good. I continued to run the float through, wearing a grove in the river bed, with 20 mins to go I struck into a bite and thought I had the bottom till it moved. With a 22 hook to 0.09 bottom on I had to let the fish run and it went off downstream, I grabbed my landing net and followed by walking along the bank under the bridge and out the other side. This was much to the annoyance / shock of Pete, but as I pointed out I was still well upstream of his peg. After a very nervy time my luck held out and I netted a lovely looking tench of near 4lb. Pete said well done or something not quite as nice lol. That fish was a real bonus and it got me a section win by a few ounces. My team ended up coming second overall in the league.

There's really not much point me writing about anything else until May in 2003, as I didn't fish that much (I had a young family to look after) and when I did fish I had an absolutely torrid time in the Hill View league getting an arse smacking and really being out of my depth with the place that year.

Some more diary memories next week then, with thankfully some better times ahead in 2003.

I cleaned out the bait fridge today, though in truth it was pretty clean as it only recently came into my possession, anyway it now serves a different purpose from Christmas until the New Year..