The wretched feeling of letting the team down

I tried to recount a story today to a friend who felt he wasn't good enough to be part of a team worried that he would let the side down.

The story isnt mine its my brothers from his blog grfishingmemories.blogspot.co.uk .  As my friend was not keen to search I said I would put it on my blog, of which he is an avid reader by all accounts.

So here it is

The Match Angler’s Leveller - River Huntspill and King Sedgemores Drain

 

This will be the last of my short stories. It is aimed at all the ordinary match anglers who never seem to make it big in the fishing world and probably have a low opinion of themselves. I found myself fishing the National Angling Championship. I can’t quite remember if it was for Andover Angling Club or the Pewsey Angling Club, but it was one of them. This was in the late 1970’s and over 30 years ago so forgive me my memory.

The match was being fished on the River Huntspill and the Sedgemoor Drain in North Somerset between Weston Super-Mare and Bridgewater. The lucky anglers got to fish the famous Huntspill which normally produced the National Winner from the equally famous Gold Corner. A really large catch of bream comes from one of those swims. Unfortunately, I was one of the unlucky ones who was drawn on the other venue, the Sedgemoor Drain. 

  

The drain was a featureless scar across the countryside and was used to take the excess water from the Huntspill and the surrounding hills when a lot of rain entered the system. When it had rain, the drain usually had a bit of a flow on it but when I fished it, the drain was almost still with very little flow.

My team had just about afforded to get the money together to buy the bait we needed and to get us there and back home. We had no sponsors and had to pay for ourselves. We could not afford to go up and practice on the Sedgemoor Drain but a couple of lads had made it to the Huntspill the week before and gleaned what they could from bank anglers and localangling shops. None of my team had even seen the Sedgemoor Drain until match day, so we were in the position of knowing nothing of the venue.

I got dropped off with two of my team to walk to the three sections in this area. I was directed by a match official towards my peg with the warning that if I moved away from my peg at any time during the match I would be disqualified and any fish that I caught would not count, and also my team might also be disqualified. I remember thinking, “What a nice man and what a good start to the match, not”!!

After walking half a mile I got to my peg. As I sat down to recover from the trek, I looked up and down the drain. Every swim looked the same. What a featureless scar on the countryside it was.   Nothing like the beautiful mature stretches of river I was used to in Hampshire with overhanging trees and bends.

It was straight for what seemed like miles and when it did bend, it was only slightly. I never saw one fish rise anywhere and it did not fill me with confidence at all. I glanced over to the swim to my right. I recognized the angler by sight, but did not know his name.(after conversation with GR I am almost certain this angler was Mervyn "Topper" Haskins , he of the famous loaded river float design Ed).

I did know however, that he was the captain of the Bristol A team. It did not take me very long to set up my float and leger rods, followed by a pole that one of my mates had let me borrow.

When I was ready, I looked round at the angler to my right again. I could not believe my eyes at what I saw. He had a vast array of armour on show. He had about 8 different poles with different tips, 5 different float set ups and the same amount of leger rods of different lengths. Moving on to his bait. He had as many as 14 bait containers around him. Together with a massive umbrella, I began to wonder how he had managed to stagger to his peg with all that gear. He must have been a very fit and healthy guy to do that.

   

I also wondered what he would be like by the time he got to my age. All in all he must have had 20 to 30 thousand pounds worth of kit at his disposal and at least 3 hundred quids worth of bait with him. Obviously he and his team were heavily sponsored. This turned out to be the case as he was sporting a waterproof jacket with a famous angling manufacturer’s name emblazoned on the back. Two other sponsors names appeared on his hat and on the side of his expensive tackle box.

He was fishing in a different world to anglers like myself, who were living on the breadline. All his kit looked brand spanking knew as if it had just been provided for that one match only. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the angler myself and you can’t blame him for accepting the sponsorship. They had probably used all the backup teams to practice on all the sections and shared the collated information at a couple of team meetings before the match. Good luck to him. It does show the vast gap between us two different anglers fishing the same match though.

I knew that the Bristol boys were absolute magic on the Bristol Avon and were rarely beaten on their home waters. They were all excellent anglers and deserved what they had become. Again, I could feel more of my confidence evaporating as the start grew nearer.  The sheer size, location and cost of fishing such a big match makes it impossible for our small teams to compete against the giant teams of angling.Sorry cant make this any bigger but its the all conquering Bristol team from 1971Ed 

Until a few years before this match, they used to award places based on weight. This did give the small teams a chance, but the change to points had taken quite a bit of magic away by making it impossible for the small team to win the team trophy. The only chance we now have is to be lucky enough for one team member to win the individual trophy. I wish we could go back to the old days when every team had a chance to win this once a year match.

As the match progressed I kept seeing bank runners out of the corner of my eye to the right. They were obviously updating the captain on how everyone else was progressing and what baits were working in what circumstances. He still didn’t look to happy whenever I caught his eye.

At the end of the match I had not caught or even seen a fish caught around me. It seemed to me to be a barren ditch in the ground. Was it polluted or something? There were blanks for six anglers to my left and also the same to my right. This included the illustrious Bristol A team captain with all his backing.

To all you ordinary club match men reading this story in the knowledge that you too have blanked in important matches, I have a simple but true message to give you. I bet you have beaten yourself up, thought you fished rubbish and felt weighed down with guilt as you approached your team mates. Hold your heads up high and remember this. It doesn’t matter how much bait you have, how much gear you have at your disposal, how much practice and back up support you have. If there are no fish in your swim, you can’t catch them.

Although I was a bit sad and annoyed that I had blanked, 

it was tempered by a slight smile in the knowledge that the crack match man to my right, probably felt far worse about blanking than I possibly could. The next time you blank, don’t feel quite so wretched, have a little smile and remember what I have told you. There is always tomorrow and another chance to bag up.

Gordon Rowland                                                               29^th July 2013