| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
Blah-bellingOH WELL, I suppose I should make some reference to last week’s Clattercote match. Despite Barney’s non-appearance, we still had plenty of wind to contend with, and a few showers thrown in, just to make us feel at home. The details of the match have been (very well) related elsewhere, but suffice it to say that this year my intense preparations paid off, and I managed not to blank.Careful mixing of groundbait the night before, two types no less, plenty of riddling to get rid of lumps, and the addition of flaked tuna and sunflower oil, guaranteed carp attractors, I was told, produced the sum total of one skimmer bream. After the match Mark Wintle did comment on the paucity of my catch in that bream usually swim in shoals, but despite my very accurate casting to the same spot every time, (clipped up line as well, no less) I managed to find the one bream that had been obviously served with some kind of piscine ASBO by his brethren and condemned to a solitary existence, forever roaming the barren, fishless wastes of Clattercote (the ones by my peg, that is). And this despite me drawing a much fancied end peg, and with empty swims both sides of me; it almost felt like I had the place to myself. There again, given some of my antics through the match, it was probably for the best that I didn’t have an audience. During the course of the day, my umbrella was up and down more times than the lingerie belonging to a lady of the night. This was due to its propensity to turn inside out at the slightest zephyr of wind unless I had both hands grasping the ribs. This doesn’t leave you with any limbs left for casting, striking, etc, so for about 20% of the match I was unable to fish properly (not an excuse, merely commenting on the adverse conditions). Halfway through the match and during one of those rare moments when I wasn’t hanging on to my umbrella for fear of emulating Mary Poppins my eagle eye spotted that one of my casts with the method feeder fell a bit short of its target, about 95% short to be precise. A quick retrieve, (well, let’s face it, it hadn’t gone far) a check that there was no line caught round spool or handle, reload feeder, prepare to re-cast and just in time notice that the extreme tip of the rod has slid down and is now resting on top of the feeder. Nothing for it but to spend valuable fishing time removing end tackle and replacing broken tip section, in the process shortening the line, and thereby critically altering my casting distance. So in effect, once I got round to fishing again, I was having to bait up a completely new swim and start all over again (once more, not an excuse, just an explanation…). Now this lead me to regret that I had not been able to purchase a new rod before the match, as I feared I wanted something a bit more beefy than the Avon’s I was using. My enquiry at the tackle shop for something in the 1  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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