Division 2 National Champs Northampton
Well chaps,
It all started on Friday afternoon leaving from Doncaster for the drive down to Northampton, 107 miles on the satnav passed pretty quickly without too much traffic and no plod flashing me or pulling me over - arrived at about 6pm and yes the rest of the lads were already sat in the beer garden half cut.
The squad I was guesting for dont treat nationals as a very serious affair and tend to go looking for individual glory and a large hangover - I'm sure you have all been there, well safe to say I dont remember getting to bed, the last thing I do remember is going into some lap dancing bar and walking straight out as they wanted £20 a dance.... apparently I texted the wife goodnight at quarter past 4 so I'm guessing thats about when I got to bed - well I say got to bed, woke up in the morning by loud banging on my door at 6.30am and still fully clothed and on top of the covers ... bit of a waste of money paying for a hotel room when you sleep on top of the covers I always say!
As I am writing this I am still feeling the effects, not as young as I used to be and have considered giving up drinking several times yesterday....
Anyway, we finally got our rabble organised by about 8am and headed off to the draw where we found nobody was there.... oh, we were half an hour late but luckly our captain had done the draw and handed me a peg in A section.. Weedon
Still in a blurr I dropped one of our team off to B section and eventually rolled into the field - the steward asked me what peg are you on... I said 14 and he replied "Oh .. unlucky mate your one peg off the flyer!"....
When I walked down the bank, thankfully only about 100 yards, I saw a massive reedbed on the far bank... Ah, thats the peg I'm next too then, the two pegs to my left had tons of stickups and reeds on the far bank - I had some trees (as did everyone else along our stretch) ... but the trees didnt come over the water - I thought it looked OK and had to ignore the stickup pegs.
I love fishing the sqatt and have fished Milton Keynes and Northampton alot in the past, everyone I had spoken to had said it was essential to fish in the shallow water up the far shelf to catch because there were hundereds of boats - I believe you need to find 2.5ft of water on that canal if you want to keep a few fish interested and go up the shelf later and only when you have too.
At this point I better mention the weather, it was gusting like a hurricane - if it had been a steady strong wind you could have handled it but it was blowing super hard one minute and then dropped a bit... you just couldnt get it right with the feeding and on a canal where loose feeding squatt is the key this was going to be a problem...
I found my two and a half feet of water at about 11M which was really a bit too close to the main boat track, but didnt want to go any further as at 12M there was only 16inch of water and pat that it shallowed right up to 10" or less - I wasnt prepared to try and feed squatt with any accuracy past 11M with the way the wind was.
Starting at 3M I put in a ball of crumb and a few squatt but found bites hard to come buy, probably putting 4oz in the net in the first 20mins which consisted of 6 roach and a couple of perch. All this time I was firing 30 squatt at my 11M line (wind permitting) - well lets say alot of it was going not were intended but I felt I was feeding it the best I could... I'm a firm believer on the grand union of getting the roach up in the water and feeding as quick as you can and this isnt going to happen feeding 10 squatt a go...
30 mins in and I decided to have a go on the roach line, started on a 4x14 with a 22 - this is really my skimmer rig as if there are some in the peg I expect to get one early and didnt want to bump one - out went the big red maggot - still feeding the squatt heavy - the first few chucks produced an odd gudgeon and blade perch - but no skimmers, then I had an ounce roach - ah, time for the proper rig..... out went the 4x12 with an IM1 24, string bulk of no11 shot and three below the bulk... immediately caught a few roach between half and one oz... then about an hour in got double boated ... bugger the boat on the far bank was brushing the trees - hey ho cant let it get you down, its still early in the match - but its really dissappointing when you just started to get a few roach lined up. I used to be one of those people who would then go up the self, but a few of us have learned that on there it will be good for an hour or so but then you will struggle for the rest of the day.
I persevered on the 11M line loose feeding the squatt and continuing to get a few fish lined up ... it was taking about 20 mins after each boat to get the roach back on that line in any numbers... trouble then came that boats were coming through regular and every other one was going right over the line I was fishing ... it was getting really annoying - anyway, as normally happens on the Union there is a lull in the boats around lunch time when all the hippies who drive the boats dissapear into the pubs, go off to smoke a joint or sit round their camp fires or whatever they do.... this gave me about an hour in the middle of the match when I started to catch well and got the roach to grow in size a bit with the odd 2ozzer... nice....
Then with an hour and a half to go the wind really got up badly and more and more boats came through - it was like the M25 of boats, dont you just love it when they are going past and the bloke has got a beer in his hand and a pipe and says "I'm staying right along the far bank out of your way" ..... I resisted the temptation to issue a volley of abuse which is surprising as with the hangover I had at the time I wasnt in the best of moods!
By the last hour I just couldnt catch appart from right up the shelf.... I thought I had my points by this stage so tried without success to catch a lump...
Scales turned up and weighed 2.575 Kg - 5lb 10oz ... was reasonably happy with the weight seeing as I had only been able to catch for 2 hours out of 5 and had caught 95% roach without a bonus in site ... just a little dissapointed that the wind was so bad as I felt like if I could have been more accurate with the feeding it would have been easy to make it 8-9lb which would have been a really nice day on the squatt.
Personally my 2.575 Kg gave me 55 points out of 60 - not bad but no cigar!
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