By Peter Harrop
We are a man down for a group three match at Grafham and desperate, Andy Smith’s email shouted and the match is in two days. Well not having work as an excuse and living only 30miles from Grafham, I volunteered as even I can match or out fish a blank of a man down. John Gamon was team captain and I was drawn with Charley from Crawley.
We started at A buoy and drifted towards G buoy on a gentle SW wind, it was quite dull and I fished an orange blob on the top dropper a hopper in the middle and a black and green booby on the point on an interm, line. After half a mile of drift I got a fierce take that took all my line and 20 yards of backing after 15 minutes that seemed to last forever I had the fish beaten an coming towards the boat. I have fished Grafham hundreds of times over the last 30 years and my best Rainbow was 4lb 14oz my long wait for a monster was coming to an end, or so I thought.
The Rainbow was well over 2 ft long and Charley offered to net it for me with his larger net, which seemed a good idea at the time. As the beaten fish was pulled towards the boat Charley’s net snagged my top fly and touched the fish, which dived and straighten my hopper hook. Charlie was a bit upset and I told him that if it takes me another 30 years to hook a monster I will be nearly 100.
Well it didn’t take 30 years the following week I fished with Brian Perryman and on the same green hopper I hooked a good fish that gave a 3 minute tussle and
Weighed in at 7 lb, not quite my monster but my best from Grafham.
As for the match we came third with the Navy winning and as we were 20 lb behind the second team the lost fish did not make a difference. Jock Bending caught the largest fish of the day a 6lb 8oz Rainbow and lost a fish twice as big.
I caught 4 Rainbows for nearly 12 lb and Charley caught one.
Something has changed at Grafham, no big fish are being stocked, so more Rainbows are over-wintering.
Can’t wait to get out there again.
Peter