Early April, warmest day this year so far (twenty-three Centigrade,) dry with a slight south-easterly breeze.
Wil announced that he wanted to start fishing again, so we left early on Tuesday morning for Hazel Court Ponds, arrived at eight as the ponds opened, and set ourselves a packing-in-time of two in the afternoon, to ease Wil back into things slowly. To make the six hours more interesting we decided on a competition. A point each for first, fish, most fish, and heaviest fish with the loser buying MacDonalds on the way home.
Peg number one on the Reed Pond had been good to us in the past, and it had Wi-Fi so we unloaded all the gear out of the car and dumped it at peg one. The umbrella went up with our two canvas chairs inside because I’d decided not to sit on my box, isolated, but to sit with Wil and have a chat, and chat we did for six hours because we couldn’t get the Wi-Fi to work.
Wil had two rods with method feeders and pink wafters, while I had one method feeder rod with an eight-millimetre pellet on it and a pellet waggler with corn on the hook so that I could watch a float and use a catapult to keep me busy. With Wil’s first rod out and the other three in preparation, he announced “I have a fish on, by the way,” and started playing what turned out to be a common carp of about two pounds. This meant that before I had a rod in the water, Wil had claimed first fish, most fish at a total of one, and also heaviest fish so far.
With my two rods out at last, my pellet waggler with a normal un-banded hook, holding corn on the bottom, took an eight ounce or so roach on the drop, so Wil’s two points still stood but I’d drawn level on fish numbers.
My method feeder was next to produce and the fish put up one hell of a fight. I told Wil, “I can’t make out if it’s a big one or a young and angry one.” When the fish finally broke the surface, I announced it as a ‘ghostie’ but couldn’t work out, from its perceived size, why it was still such an effort to get him to the landing net. When he was in the carp-bath things became more obvious. Tangled around the fish was a mass of line, a hook that looked like maybe a size eight or ten, and two weights of three ounces each. Obviously, those weights were removed before the fish was weighed at three pounds four ounces, and a photo taken of this lovely koi cross with a mirror, showing a few mirror scales. There were what appeared to be bits of dirt on the fish but on closer inspection they were spots of black from a koi parent. I’m sure that the tangle of line was also around debris or twigs, hence the difficulty in pulling the fish in, but I was so pleased to release this fish in a far healthier state than he’d been in for who knows how long.
So, first fish could not be challenged but I now had both heaviest and the most.
After a couple more casts with the method feeder, I changed things up with the banded hook still holding an eight-millimetre pellet on the band but now a grain of sweetcorn was placed on the hook as an added, tempting extra. This produced a common carp of exactly the same weight as the ‘ghostie.’
The pellet waggler hadn’t produced for a while, the corn sinking through the water column then laying over-depth on the bottom. I decided to halve the depth and see if any fish were feeding at midwater. The single hook came off and a quick-stop hook went on and was baited with two five-millimetre discs of bread. With no bites coming from the bread, the quick-stop received double corn fished mid-water with groups of single corn grains catapulted over. This produced a float that dived under the water, followed by a fight with a fish that took line every time it saw the landing net. It turned out to be a one-pound-three-ounce tench, possibly one of the tench we saw introduced to this pond as stock-fish last year.
With Wil’s method feeders not producing, I was confident of a two points to one win over Wil, claiming heaviest fish and most fish. You shouldn’t count your chickens before they’re hatched though, or, you shouldn’t celebrate a fishing competition until the hooter. Ten minutes before the two o’clock hooter, Wil’s rod wobbled and line on his bait runner reel started being stripped off. Holding onto the spool to affect a strike, he fought hard against a common carp that was eventually brought to the net at five pounds eight ounces. In that instant I lost my ‘heaviest fish’ status, it went to Wil, and it was me that forked out for our evening meal.