Ten Tenches Deep!: Raygill Fisheries, Lothersdale, Keighley - MD War of the Roses 2011

Other commitments had kept me off the bank for a few weeks but here was day that would turn out to be one to remember!!! I will be honest and say on Saturday I wished I wasn't fishing this match. After learning we would be fishing for small roach, never fished a Roses match before and the fact I would be out till 1am on Saturday at a Charity bash and would need to be up at 5am for this one to pick up the Big Dipper I could have stayed in bed - how glad I am that I wasn't! A fantastic day from start to finish that showed what social match fishing is all about - a top laugh.

I picked up Martin at 5:40am (yes sub 6am on a Sunday!!!) with a distinct taste of Guinness in my mouth and we set off for the rendezvous at Blackburn services on the M65 at 6:15 before heading onto Samsons Café and Delicatessen in Nelson for a hardy breakfast!!!

The plan for the day was to fish as a team at 8m with maggot on the deck and feeding small amounts of wet groundbait and 1 or 2 maggots every other fish or so. We arrived at Raygill at around 8:30 ready for the banter to begin. There is a great rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire (and as everyone knows - they lost the war!!!) and I honestly think nobody was bothered about catching fish...just beating the opposition! Batman scaled a cliff (or rather a large lump of concrete) to hang a Lancashire flag for all to see - we had arrived.

Flag of Champions?

Whilst Methodgob had a poxy blue flag with a white rose on it hung from a telescopic pole - nice to see them flying a white flag of surrender even before the result!!!

Flag of Surrender

The venue is lovely looking and has the potential I'm sure for a great day fishing - however Sunday 15th May 2011 was not going to be a great day for fishing!!! With gale force winds, driving rain at times (a typical Yorkshire Summer) and waves like tidal surges I did not fancy a peg facing the wind. As we draw I didn't want 17 - 21 so in typical fashion was ecstatic to draw out peg 20!!!! Oh well, tool myself up with waterproofs and get gooing wit yed down! The match was to be fished 10:15 till 3:15 with the Yorkies seemingly very confident of regaining the trophy they haven't held since 2008 - although we had prepared and had some great lads in our team...they never stood a chance :-).

From my peg I only had open water with 6' depth at 8m and 7' at 14m. Our team plan was to have 2 lines, one at 8m as previously mentioned and a long line with pellet that we could try for bonus fish (preferably not carp as these only weigh 1lb regardless of size so a bonus bream or tench would be better). I setup 2 rigs, a 4x14 diamond bodies hand made float for swim 1 (8m) and the same float in a 4x16 with thicker tip for swim 2 (14m). Rig 1 had a strung out shot pattern to hopefully get roach on the way down in the groundbait cloud (with hindsight I should have bulked this rig close to the hook for better presentation in the conditions) and a size 20 B7111 hook to 0.09 line. Rig 2 had said bulk and a Tubertini 808 to 0.12 line.

On my peg

At the all in I cupped in a medium pot of 4mm pellet at 14m at 2 o'clock (fighting the gale!!!) and a small ball of groundbait with a dozen red maggots at 8m at 10 o'clock. A single red maggot on swim 1 brought me a 1oz roach after 10 minutes, followed immediately by another. It was hard to spot bites at times as the waves were so high the float was disappearing under them regularly without the assistance of a fish. Then I had a small lull of 15 minutes before I had another fish - this time a small perch. So far I had only seen one fish come out and that was Dave to my right - I was feeling quite good. However - that perch was my last bite until 1pm!!! I tried the pellet line after half an hour and gave it 15 minutes before reverting back to my maggot line. Nothing. I worked the rig left and right. I tried 7m then 9m before deciding to give 14m at 10 o'clock a go. I potted in a little groundbait and red maggot and got an immediate response - another 1oz roach. I could see all round the lake that everybody seemed to be struggling - although discouragingly to my right, Dave had had a good number of quality roach and was way ahead of me. Also on the far bank Methodgob had hooked a few card an lost them (what a shame!!!) before landing a decent fish. By this time, the poor weather and even worse fishing was causing dissent in the Yorkshire ranks as Cleggy was bombarded with banter regarding the choice of venue (hehe!!!). I continued to get bites from small fish but somehow managed to lose 6 on the run after hooking them. This was so frustrating for me. After losing 2 I changed to a brand new hook and still lost 4 all around the 1oz mark. I was only fishing a number 4 latex so really should have got these fish to the net. I kept going though and at 3pm was beginning to think I would be weighing less than 5oz form the 5 fish in my net. At ten past 3 I hooked a better fish and brought to the net a skimmer that would boost my total to 1lb 1oz after 5 hours toiling!!!

The weigh in was quite a tense affair as Yorkshire seemed to dominate the far bank winning the first 3 sections and giving them hope that they were winning. This match is scored in a way I have never know a match score before. Although the match is a team event, it is scored by totalling up the individual points from finishing 1st to 34th (more like a singles match). Not only that, the allocation of points is backward (we were in Yorkshire after all) with the winner gaining 34 points and last gaining 1 point and the winning team gaining the highest number of points not the lowest. Walking round from the halfway point it seemed pretty close but Yorkshire had bigger weights and were looking strong, but then on the second half Lancashire fared much better getting consistently better weights than their Yorkshire counterparts. At the end of the weigh in the match was in the balance as we headed to the pub for the presentation not knowing who had won and with speculation rife. They had 4 of the top 5 (or so we thought) giving them a hatful of points but we thought we had more in the middle positions than them. Basically it would come down to whether or not we had more 20's than their 30's.

We were at the pub a good 20 minutes (seemed like AGES) before Tricky and Methodgob who had done the weigh in and subsequent totalling turned up with the result. Looking at their faces either Yorkshire had lost - or I don't want to play poker against these guys!!!! Then as debate ensued Captain Breamy looked at the results list and his face changed - I knew straight away the result!!!

We've won! I'm not smug - honest

For the third year running we had beaten our Yorkshire rivals in a result that in the end wasn't as close as we thought as we won by 44 points. Yorkshire won the sections 3 to 2, and had more weight by 1lb but in overall points we had won prompting a sight to rival an African Sunset or the Taj Mahal, or even the Hanging Gardens of Babylon...Cleggy's face as he realised he'd lost and would have to hand the trophy once more to Breamy's team :-)