Good Afternoon.

It is a lovely sunny day and I am sat outside at my table enjoying the day as it unfolds. It is actually nice to relax for a change, as the last two day’s workload has been rather tiring to say the least! I mentioned on Thursday’s post that I packed some of my kit away to lighten the load and what a good idea that was. Yesterday morning we were both up early and the final pack down of our equipment into our boats began. A long day beckoned as the sun rose to help warm things along.

Walking thirty times through ankle-deep squelchy mud with heavy material is never the nicest job to undertake but you just get on with it. Slowly the mountain of kit seems to reduce in size as the load in your boat grows! Very careful packing had to be done and after a couple of years practice I now have it down to a fine art. I wouldn’t like to know the total weight in my trailer boat when it is full, but yesterday it must have been close to half a ton! My dogs and I travel in the inflatable that then tows the trailer. It is a good system and normally I can do everything in one trip and that was yesterdays plan.

Me and Mouse!

Successfully we left our swim and headed to our new home for the weekend. We were joined by another friend Stefano, who arrived to celebrate my birthday. We decided he could be our runner for 24hrs! Using my 6HP engine we towed my trailer and Emanuele in his boat in a train. It worked very well and in 30 minutes we arrived at our designated swim for the Enduro. We passed Menny aka Menny Baits, who is set up about 500m to our left. Our swim is set in a large bay and we obviously have reeds in the margins which are our main target. The lake is deeper in this part and goes down to 15m about half way out. I know because I fished near this spot in 2008 for five days.

For the competition!

On arriving at our swim, typically we heard some claps of thunder, and a few flashes of lightning were seen in the skies – what a welcome! I made a captain’s decision and we quickly erected our shelters to protect all of our dry equipment from the imminent rain. There is usually a large amount of kit which does not matter if it gets wet. Beds, bags and important gear however, needs to be put away quickly. In record time we were done, thanks to help from Stefano. It was great team work.

My side!

Mouse's side!

We assembled our pods and after finding a good spot for them, to give good access with the boats, and to allow for good line direction, it was then time to start fishing. The time was now approaching the 4am start so in all fairness we had done well considering we had lots of work to do that day and more than the other entries who just had to arrive and set up.

Two bivvies - twenty minutes!

In record time I had three rods in the water. I put one close to the reeds, one at the drop off in 7m. (The drop off is quite sharp and we wanted to keep our options open for the first night.) I am also fishing one rod at range to the left hand point of the bay that we are in. Menny can also fish to this spot, so we had a quick chat about it yesterday and established our boundaries.The point area is very shallow and there are no reeds here. A tree is the focal point and I placed my bait in a 4m depth after it slopes away from the shallow hard ground.

Finally I got to celebrate my birthday with a beer!

Emanuele placed his rods down the right hand side, putting one rod down by the reeds. The angle is not really possible so he is bringing the line around a pole back to his pod. His two other rods have been placed in the shallow water area in front which is found after you rise up from the 7m spot where I have one rod. I hope you have a picture in your head!

The swim in all fairness is not the best, but then it isn’t the worst. It is a middle of the road swim and while it is possible to maybe take the biggest carp, I don’t think it is a winning peg at this time of year. The shallow end of the lake is where the carp have been caught, and I say that because carp have been caught! Hooray! I am not sure on numbers but I heard on the grapevine that about six carp were caught from a couple of pegs where there is a massive shallow bay stuffed full of reeds and carp by the sounds of it! A twenty kilo carp is the biggest so far. I am very happy to hear this news because guess where I will be heading tomorrow lunchtime! I said I would be staying on afterwards and that is still my plan. I suppose in some ways I can use this competition to my great advantage. I can build up a map of where the carp are getting caught from and then move on that. I need to finish this session with a good haul of fish and I know that’s possible. What I am really after though is the biggie, and I would rather that than have the numbers.

With regards to the Enduro I am just enjoying my fishing in Roddie Bird WCC style. He will know what I mean. You can’t take these events too seriously or you go away disappointed. Having worked at two WCC events I know how these competitions work and a good draw is always essential. You make the best of what you get given and you can only fish the water in front of you. My equipment has not actually been unpacked fully as I want to load up the boat asap tomorrow morning and then go to the meeting point for the Enduro ceremony, being held at Menny’s swim which is conveniently close. From there I will have a two kilometre boat trip to get to the shallow bay area. Is it sneaky or lazy to go and fish in the what turns out to be the winning peg or does it make good sense? I think it makes perfectly good sense. If it was possible to fish in Rob Tough and Tom Duncan-Dunlop’s peg at the WCC Madine event after the competition ended, I would have been in there like a shot and I am sure the other 124 pairs would have done the same. Unfortunately it wasn’t allowed because the area is normally out-of-bounds, although I did hear on the grapevine that a few anglers were fishing the area from boats the following week. With two dogs that is not possible and as it isn’t actually allowed I don’t condone that kind of behaviour.

I will be back tomorrow evening. I hope we manage to Winkle one out before the end tomorrow morning and we will keep trying and keep on smiling.

Cheers

Jake, Emanuele, and two sun-baked dogs!

Tags: Enduro, jake langley-hobbs, Madine, Menny Baits, Rob Tough, Tom Duncan-Dunlop, WCC

This entry was posted on April 17, 2010 at 11:39 am and is filed under The Italian Job!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.