FMS League 04/03/2007
16 teams of 5
fished on the Staffs/Worcs canal at Stafford.
With the weather forecast threatening rain and gale force winds I was quite happy that only the latter was evident as I loaded my tackle into the car. It was now that I realised that I did not actually know where the draw was…..ermmmmm…No problem, the draw had always been at The Trumpet on Radford Bank before for Stafford matches.
After sitting on the car park for 10 minutes on my own I then realised that I was at the wrong pub, time to phone the lads and ask for a bit of assistance….menu…search…Mark Shep…call……NO CREDIT…..oops…..now that’s a bit of a problem…
I still dont know who i had phoned with the credit while the phone had been in my trouser pocket..think think think....what do i do? solution...find a newsagents, get credit for my phone and Bob's your uncle... Why is it that whenever you drive round on monday to saturday every shop wants to top up your vodaphone "pay as you go" but when you need one you have got more chance of picking up an Angling Times in Asda without a pile of Free to enter competitions falling out. It was at this point that the Woodhouse luck suddenly returned because as i was approaching yet another roundabout i saw Preecy and Andy Moulton going it the opposite direction so i followed them and arrived at Stafford Boat club with plenty of time to spare.
When I met the rest of the team (W B Clarke toss Pots), and after the previous 45 minutes events, I honestly hadn't a clue why THEY had voted ME to do the draw but I played along with them fearing the worst, I paid the pools and whilst writing the names on the team sheet one of the envelopes had become stuck to my hand, that was to be our draw!
I handed the team sheet to the organiser Tony Keeling and he started writing down the pegs next to the names.
peg B6 Steve Dudley
A11 Lee Woodhouse
D16 Simon Mottram
E16 Simon Preece
C3 Ian Crossman
As I handed out the pegs to the lads it was obvious that I had been correct in keeping the envelope that had chosen me. We had 3 very good pegs, one decent peg at the right end of the section and one average peg, no prizes for guessing which one I was on...
My peg was on the left hand side of bridge 96 and used to be one of the best pegs on the stretch when the canal was full of big gudgeon, alas they had long gone and with my 8 peg section running from A9 to A16 with A9 on a big bush and A15 and16 in the marina I was always going to struggle to be at the right end of the section, I was also told that my peg and the peg to my left had been last and last but one in section in the previous years match and with this in mind I thought if I could be the best of the rest and finish 4th then the lads might carry me through,
My sole intention now was to concentrate on catching small fish on bloodworm and joker and with this in mind I set up just 3 rigs.
Rig one was to fish on my top three in 3 1/2 foot of water and included a 0.3 gram Dufils float with an olivette 18 inches away from a size 24 PR31 hook with 6 number 12 droppers.
Rig two was to fish at 7m was set up with a 4x12 Preston PB14 float shotted with 19 no.13 shot placed an inch apart from half depth down to 4 inches away from a size 26 Fox MP-1B barbless hook. I was very disappointed to find only 2 foot at 7m as the rest of the pegs are normally at least a foot deeper on this line, one consolation was that it was the same depth at 9m which was only a foot away from the far bank and with the wind now very strong this heavier rig could be useful to fish across.
rig three was to fish over and was a Maver black ice 4x8 float shotted with 5 number 13 shot spread out to a size 26 MP-1B.
Number two elastics were to be used on all three rigs.
With the canal coloured I thought it could be beneficial to mix a small amount of groundbait to feed on one of my lines in case there were some of the Pongo's still in the vicinity, this would be a 50:50 mix of VDE supermatch and Roach noire.
Baitwise I had 1/2 a kilo of joker and a small hookpack of bloodworm,along with 1/2 pt of casters that would feed the birds at the end of the match.
To prepare the joker for feeding I took it out of the paper and placed it into a four pint ASDA bait box and added a 150ml cupping pot of riddled damp black leam to separate it, a handful of this was placed to one side to be put into the groundbait just before feeding, to the remaining i added a couple of good squirts of Kryptonite to bind it properly.
