That just leaves painting the woodwork on the stairs which isn't a rush job as there has been masking tape on the handrail since the 90's so a few more months won't hurt!
Anyway, first up in the backlog was a match at Trinity (Woodlands) way back on 18 August.
It was another glorious sunny day with very little wind and prior to the start there were fish showing all over the lake which looked promising.
For whatever reason though, most likely down to the bright calm conditions, the carp were cagey on the shallow pole line and the way forward seemed to be with paste.
Pete Sivell did the honours from a flat clam and unfancied peg 2 with 108lbs on (you guessed it) .... paste.
Second on the day was Chris (2 pieces of worm) Gay with 77-11 from peg 27 followed by Brian Shanks on golden peg 8 who staged a legendary comeback after a fruitless first half of the match to weigh in 71-11.
Silvers was a tie between Simon Belcham and Chris Gay both with 11-0 although Simon collared the money by default.
I had yet another bad day after drawing peg 13. I struggled to catch shallow on the pole so switched to trying to catch skimmers on meat which was semi successful but they were small fish. I had tails waving in my right margin but I hadn't plumbed it up and just went in there with meat on my adapted shallow rig. If I had have plumbed the margin I would have realised that there was a complicated network of tree roots under the surface and saved myself a whole lot of heartache!
I ended up with 8-1 of silvers and 26-2 of carp for a measly 34-3 which was a lot closer to the bottom of the weigh sheet than the top and meant handing over pound coins to both Alan Healy and a very smug Pete Sivell.
I was even
Speaking to Misha's bodyguard and resident expert, Tom after the match he seemed to think the pellet wag would have been the way to go, he may have been right but who knows as I don't recall anyone using it on the day.
Next up was the "much anticipated" inter-club with Fry's at Durleigh res.
Merv Sivell loves this place and had enthusiastically talked me into this one and to be fair I've heard the fishing (especialy for the roach and bream) is awesome but I had a sneaking suspicion that we weren't going to have a very good turnout from psv with mutterings about horrendous walks to pegs etc.
As it happened we had 2 turn out for psv and one of those was a "ringer".
Lee's blog from this match can be found ..... click here
To be honest I would have been more than happy to have fished it myself as I've never even seen the place but unfortunately I was in Skiathos at the time and I have absolutely no idea of the result!
The following weekend was on the match lake at Harescombe near Stroud.
30-ish pegs in an oval around a central island at around 14m with no features to speak of and stuffed full of small carp and f1's averaging 1 to 2lbs so a nice and fair venue where you need a lot of fish to do well.
Winner on the day was Andy Curry with 81-8 (peg 3) followed by Mark Radford with 73-2 (peg 15).
Another Fry's defector, Jason Bird was 3rd (he's took my advice on board and seems to be trying a bit harder) with 67-13 (peg 9)
Alan Healy was 4th with 66-12 (peg 5).
I've just been through the results and in actual fact Ryan Radford was 3rd with 71-2 (peg 29) so perhaps Jason Bird really ought to try that litle bit harder!
Next up was Walters Lake at South Cerney. This was our 3rd visit here and my first match back from holiday so I was hoping for a good day today as the previous two visits had been disappointing (crap).
Walters consists of four interconnected canal-style "lanes" set out in a in a "w" shape and the Saturday opens regularly produce weights of 200lbs plus
This time round we were on the Blue lane which is supposed to be the best one and there was another club match on White behind us.
To cut a long story short, it fished crap (again)!
Mark Radford took the honours with 63-8 from peg 18 caught on pellet. He was struggling for the first few hours until the fish eventually turned up in force.
Chris Szakacs repeated his previous performance here by taking 2nd place (again) with 62-12 from peg 8.
Third place went to Pete Uzzell from end peg 19 fishing worm up towards the corner and weighing in 59-15, closely followed by Brian Shanks with 58-0 from peg 16.
Brian also collared the Silvers with 5-10.
Ironically peg 1 (best peg on the lake) never got drawn. The following Saturday produced a new venue record of 400lbs-odd so no prizes for guessing which peg produced this weight!
My day was grim to say the least. After nearly five hours I had nothing bar one lost fish that I'd hooked on meat swinging a long shallow rig out as far as I could get towards the far bank at 16m. Once hooked it had trashed my rig in the undergrowth! I managed to avoid the dreaded blank with a couple of late fish from the margins and that was heart-stopping as on my peg (bridge peg 11) they like to take you round the corner and under the bridge to freedom so it's a bit of a tug-of-war even with the small ones.
One day I'm sure we'll get this venue right on the right day but at £8.50 for a large brekkie and a coffee I'll be taking sandwiches!
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