Stubpond teams of 7

Today was definitely a lesson in (bad) preparation. After my last visit was a pole only match, I really fancied a day on the waggler, and accordingly drew a great looking waggler swim, peg 66 at the near end of the lake, with a 25 yd cast to the boards. However, upon opening my box I noted I had left all my reels at home. Hmmm, not a good start. Borrowed reel in hand I started rigging up, and realised I had not tied any appropriate hooklengths. Bad to worse and still and hour before the start. Undeterred, I also set up a paste rig at 6mtrs, and a little edge rig, but as i had I didnt really fancy either edge, I had a peg either side, and couldnt get more than 2 mtrs away from me due ot the nature of the foliage. Mark Harrington was on 65 to my right, he'd won the previous match I'd fished with 160lb+, so at least I could watch & learn something !

Anyway, I had tench first bung on the paste, then 4 carp on the wag after about 90 mins, Mark had had about 8-10, but smaller than mine. Not so bad. I then proceeded to put about 4 wagglers up the boards, which wasnt so bad in itself, but re-tieing 0.21 knotless knots with a quick stop onto a size 14 (eye sometimes letting line in sometimes not) in the pissing down rain somehow seemed to take up most of the middle 2 hours, which is just rubbish. A good look on the paste never bought a bite either. I finally got it back together on the wag, and had 3 more in the last 90 minutes, and did 3 more (fish & wagglers, plus over 20 bits of ssg bythe end). 65 was bagging up big time by this point, he ended with 26 fish for 130lb, me with 7 for 33. Very poor, should easily have had 15-20 fish from my peg, and a very clear lesson on going properly kitted up.

I'm glad no-one is reading these.