14/06/26, Points Match/Coaching, Charlottes Lake, Harbourbridge.

It’s been a funny old week. Now the universe seems to have stamped even harder on my life’s accelerator, it only seems like a few days since we were at Whitemoor. In a way it is, but it feels like less days than it is…

Global warming has seen fit to keep us on our toes as the weather changes from winter to spring, on to summer, back to spring, little of winter again and back to summer. All this with the occasional heat wave, windstorm, and ice age.

Mrs H is now done with respiratory problems and sought new consultants in the realms of Cardiology. I’ve always said she has a big heart and now apparently, she has! The rut of life has been getting too comfortable lately, so a new threat to my beloved is as welcome as a hungry Fox at a Chickens only fund raiser.

I needed a bright, warm, sunny day to dissolve the stress and I got it in spades. Harbourbridge looked resplendent in the summer sunshine. I just hope I live long enough to see the bright white track bedded in enough to push a trolley on it.

With the car loaded with more gear than a cloud full of bowling balls, I began the long process of unloading everything.

Jerry arrived with an equally stuffed car including the new space age Bog Tent. Once the important stuff was ready, Jezza went off to erect the new ‘Easy up’ tent and thunder box.

Only it wasn’t easy. Jeremy called me to assist and, once on site, I noticed a very two-dimensional tent lying flat on the ground next to the poop pot. Captain Chris was present but his experience with past encounters with the faecal depository leaves him with the twitches, shakes, and ‘Forest Whitaker eye’ at the mere mention of it.

I showed them the way by going inside, opening it as I went, and emerging through the zipped door with a ‘Ta daa!’ They weren’t amused.

I had my own private moment with the Scat Shack as I tried to remember how the blue monolith packed away into a flat round bag. Fortunately, due to my almost superhuman ability to recall everything I see and hear, I managed to fluke it in there…

Jerry complained about having to take it home, but I’ve been carting the thunder bucket around with me for years now. My car was, again, rammed and two little journeys was not going to hurt…

Deciding to have a coaching session along side a match event was a good idea. The whole lake was festooned with juniors trying to fool wary fish to eat their baited hooks. If only someone had come up with this idea, I don’t know, seven-years ago?

Our junior events have been this way for a long time now. But I don’t care about that. It was nice to see the lake almost full of enthusiastic young anglers for the day.

The serious part of the day was the match at the far end of the lake. The competitors for this were…

Peg 1: Seth Hopkins.

Peg 2: Jack Copp.

Peg 3: Austin Scott-Kennedy.

Peg 4: Kenzie Toulson. Peg 5: Josiah Wells-Parkes

Peg 6: Alexander Adey.

Your effervescence of coaches (the correct collective noun for seven angling coaches) today were:

Graham Howard - Steve McQueen/Vin

Jerry Bracey – Charles Bronson/Bernado O’Reilly

Neil Haine – Yul Bryner/Chris Adams

Tim Broughton – James Coburn/Britt

Jon Bass – Eli Wallach/Calvera

Chris Ward – Robert Vaughn/Lee

John Evans – Horst Bucholtz/Chico

A quick run through the match then starting, as you would expect, with peg six…

Peg Six:

Alexander Adey:

3lbs 5ozs, 6th place, 13-points.

Alexander arrived a tad late and was plonked on the end. The little lad is never phased by fishing matches. In fact, I believe that he endures the match event simply so he can see what he has caught at the end! It all started reasonably well for him, but in the 2-hour interval when I was hosting a taster session, things had all gone pear shaped. All credit to him, he was trying to emulate the older kids who were catching steadily on the feeder. Sadly, for the A-dog, the casting fairies had abandoned him today. Step up the Head Coach, a shallowed pole rig on a top kit, and some maggots that were barely hanging on to life. I demonstrated catching silverfish near the surface and was able to talk them through the process of feeding etc. It was working and Alexander had doubled his catch in the last 35-minutes of the match. I made a mental note to keep a better eye on him in future.

Peg Five:

Josiah Wells-Parkes:

14lbs 8ozs, 3rd place, 17-points.

Josiah was sporting some new ‘bendy legs’ after his appalling leg injuries caused by kicking the windbag. (Football, not his dad)…

It's all chair fishing for Jo these days until he fully heals. Then he can hop onto a grown-up seat box. Jo has grown much taller lately and that’s hardly surprising when you look at James.

Jo caught steadily throughout the day, mostly on the feeder to bag himself a third place slot and 17 sweet points. Who knows, maybe if Jo’s body can keep up with him he might be in with a shout of silverware by this time next year?

Peg Four:

Kenzie Toulson:

26lbs 7ozs, 1st place, 25-points.

In the limited time I had to spend with the match competitors, whenever I looked at Kenzie, he seemed to be trying to sort out what the fish wanted to keep his catch rate up.

This shows that he is evolving into the next level of angler. It is bitter/sweet to see this happening as a coach because it means you have done your job, but it also means that your students are starting to need you less.

Either way the lad, put enough fish in his keep net to put a winning weight on the scales for his second career match win.

But it was close.

Well done Kenzie!

Peg Three:

Austin Scott-Kennedy:

5lbs 14ozs, 5th place, 14-points.

Austin has been mixing it with the big dogs and venue specialists at Revels lately. Following in Jack Copp’s footsteps and like Kenzie, Austin is evolving into a very rounded angler. Sadly, experience and skill will not prevent the wheels falling off every now and then. A bit like today…

I had a quick word with him afterwards and I don’t think there was a lot else that he could have done. I get the impression that he went for gold with any larger fish still left in the lake.

The other thing to point out is the fact that the Carp were having a little spawn for most of the day.

Excuses? Well, maybe…

But they are facts, and you can’t ignore them.

Whatever the reason, Austin’s luck ran out today and it is the lowest I have seen him finish in a junior event for a long time.

Peg Two:

Jack Copp:

25lbs 4ozs, 2nd place, 20-points.

I’ve written a lot about Jack over the years and most of it was good…

I first met Jack when he was 5-years old. Now 13, the transformation is incredible. It’s difficult to look at Jack and see him as a junior, despite his tender age.

Jack’s travel partner is Richie ‘The House Wife’s Favourite’ Butler (Who turned up just as I cast a feeder into a tree. Something I haven’t done for goodness knows how long!) and fishing with a good angler like Richie can only do good things for your own ability.

I think Jack fished an experimental match today. Using methods that the other juniors either couldn’t or didn’t want to use. Either way Jack cruised to a close second place, one fish would have tipped the balance in his favour.

Jack is almost a guest at junior events these days because of his other commitments. But a very welcome one…

Peg One:

Seth Hopkins:

14lbs 2ozs, 4th place, 15-points.

I gave the end peg plenty of room and Seth made the best of it with some lovely looking Roach, but sadly not enough Carp. Personally, as I get older, I would rather catch a net of decent silverfish than a bag of overweight mud-pigs. But that’s just me…

Like Jack, Seth was ounces from bigger and better things missing out, as he did, on third place by just 6ozs.

Seth is one of our juniors who is showing potential and one who needs to be nurtured to become a threat to ‘good’ anglers in the future.

On the coaching front, we hosted two taster sessions for new anglers Grayson and Max. I personally didn’t get much chance to speak to Max, But I did the session for Grayson.

He’s very young, only six, and therefore has yet to develop the necessary patience. Having said that, I didn’t have that much patience at that age either!

One thing that Max and Grayson have in common is that they both caught fish and both had a great time fishing with us, apparently, and that’s all you can ask for at the end of the day.

The coaching juniors were Harriet, Ben, Finn, and Mia. Alfie was a no show.

Mia was only around for part of the day because Wendy is made glass and shattered when she fell over John’s wallet that had been carelessly left in the middle of the floor.

One broken foot, a big toe, a finger, and a Partridge in a pear tree later, and she had more injuries than the last time I jumped off a motorbike at 85 mph.

Harriet and Mia have already won their gold badges and are candidates for the next level Cast awards, where as Ben and Finn both gained their silver badges, so congrats them both.

Apart from Neil wearing pink Crocs and flowery socks just to wind me up (I hate Crocs), and forgetting to apply sun cream therefore taking on the appearance of a cooked lobster, it was a great day spent with good friends, new and (very) old…

Big thanks to our coaching team of Jerry, John, Jon, Tim and Chris, with special thanks to Neil for taking some great piccies (despite the Crocs!)…

Thank you to Jim Roper for allowing us to fish on Charlottes Lake today.

Our event is not until the end of July, but we may try to throw something together for the end of June.

Until then, consider yourself Bread Punched…