kev allen

right here goes

i started to arrange this years event at the end of jan , i like to give myself plenty of time , to get as many on board as poss and raise as much as poss

i sent out 1000 mails / e mails/ phone calls trying to get as many raffle prizes as i could , i do pride myself in a good selection of prizes

as the day grew near it was plain to see this year was going to be massive , last year we had 80 anglers , this year there was 312 down to fish , but only 228 turned up , still very good ,

the day before i went to lindholme to pick up rob hitchens van , if it wasnt for him the prizes certainly would have got there in one trip , for that i thank him ,

the night before i loaded the van a few phone calls and a very large whiskey off to bed for what i know would be a restless night ,
i selp till 2-30 then my dog a black lab called ZAK woke me up barking , doesnt normally do this . so with having a van with about 4 grands worth of prizes sat on my drive , i was up like a bullet ,
couldnt see or hear anything , ........ but that was it sleep over , wide awake club ,
got up at 4am coffee more coffee , watch the weather , last year we had snow , hahahahaah

6-15am off to pick my right hand man (martin ) we got to the end of his street and oh can we go back mate , ive forgot to put my bin out , hahahaah

so after the said bin was out off we set ,

we had some signs to put up , dont know if any of you saw them ?

when we arrived at lindholme at 06-40am there was already about 30 anglers walking about , i couldnt believe it ,
idrew my peg willows 4 , i was happy with that

into cafe for a good breakie , and then thats when i knew how busy it was going to be ,

with a good nosh inside me it was raffle ticket time ,
ive never seen as much money just thrown at me it was totaly unreal , i was going through raffle books like they was going out of fashion , one guy bought £60 another £50 worth in one go ,
with all the give aways and fishing rebulic handing out free T-shirts and hats it was just spot on ,
the i had handed out some sponsor forms to one or two folks who had asked for them
this one guy called dave radford , last year gave me a cheque for £300 , this year he gave me a cheque for £750 , what a guy that man is , thankyou dave , ......

i had my 2 helpers with me martin and nige who i work with , nige wasnt fishing due to other commitments but came and gave me 5 hours of help , thanks nige ..

it was a case of selling tickets and chatting were i could but , not alot of time to meet and greet everyone due to the mad selling , could do with more help on that front i think for next year ,

with myself and martin fishing the event it was as case of you go get set up when you get back il go get set up , this worked well ,

10-15 arrived and jonny howard blew the horn for the start ,

i was into a carp in the first 2 mins , yes i thought this will do , then nothing for a bit , a few fish then nothing , it was like this till noon ,
then i thought right fish right over to the left side , there was a spare peg so in i went and bang a lump first put in instant success , about 7lb

kept going back into samne spot chub carp chub carp for next 2 hrs , i had the guy from northern angler sat behind me watching and taking photos ,

i stopped fishing at 2-45pm so i could go help wiegh in , packed up but left my nets there to weigh later ,

jonny blew the hooter at 3-15pm , and off we went ,

the first to weigh was a guy who had only been fishing 6 months , he was very happy with the few ponds he weighed in , and good luck to him , well done

my net was second , it totaled 17-12oz , witnessed by martin and ian from northern angler ,

as we went round i thought i stood a chance of a section win , there was one guy who id seen catch a few , but he fell short by a few lbs , so there it was id won my section , i was very happy with that ,

the biggest weight we had weighed was 5olb from rob hitchens , untill we got to tim hayes of derbyshire , he had 3 nets in , ...........
and did he need them ,,, he weighed in a massive 131lb of carp from peg 54 laurels all on meat , he told me he had struggled for first 2 hours , , not bad eh i wish id struggled like that ,

the raffle

well this is always a laugh with neil drawing , and it was to be no differant , i hope you all had a win ( more than i did ) ,

the amount raised so far is £5,127 and still a bit more to come ,

hope you enjoyed the day and the read , and hope to see you all next year and see if we can beat the total again

cheers
kev