28/02/26 - Winter Shakedown - Luckfield Lake

Saturday finally arrived and it was great to be at a junior event once more. It seems like an eternity since the Christmas match at the end of November last year. Mainly because it’s been such a busy winter.

Plugging into an existing club to build a junior section is one thing. Having to dig the foundations for a new one is a whole different bucket of frogs. But we are getting there and have reached a state of limbo whilst we wait for the authorities to make their decision on funding. In the mean time we (Jerry and I) have pushed ahead with bank accounts, display graphics, clothing, business cards, membership cards, posters and, of course, a new website. Amongst the new equipment is a new, third generation bog tent and this is where we will start the BS for this blog…

Fans of the ‘Bog Tent Saga’ were devasted to hear that we’d managed to destroy our second tent last year. It managed to limp over the line with some serious injuries and was buried with full ceremonial honours in a skip at Dorchester tip. There was no sympathy from the council workers at the sight of a grown man trying not to weep whilst disposing of a nylon modesty tent.

Bog Tent 3.0 is a new and improved model. Sleek and very blue. It comes in a round bag with straps that enable it to be carried like a rucksack. My crumbling brain went immediately to the potential fun times cosplaying as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I bagsy being either Retifillio, Banjo, or Tagliatelle…

It's a pop-up tent which means it trembles as you unzip the bag, and explodes into shape with a ‘Whompf!’ and all the enthusiasm I wish I still had for life. I first set it up in the garden where it lay all two-dimensional on the ground. I stood it up and opened it to an ‘L’ shape. I attempted to make it a square and only succeeded in making it an ‘L’ shape in the other direction. This happened five times….

With a little language I peeled it out into a square, it stood firm and proud like every good tent should. A glinting blue monolith in the late spring sunlight.

‘Great’, I thought with a smile and attempted to send it back from whence it came.

I made it into an ‘L’ shape.

I made it two dimensional.

How in the name of Cod do I make it round?

Bend that, twist this, push there, all with no joy.

Each time I tried I could hear the tent saying ‘ow, ow, ow, no, wait, what are you doing? Oooh MOTHER!’

Nothing else for it, I’m going to need to buy a van and take it everywhere fully erected.

Being a bloke and after 20-minutes of to trying to suss it out for myself, I thought that now would be a good time to look at the instructions.

30-seconds later it was in the bag. Why do we do it to ourselves?

The usual anxiety of Friday where my suspected ‘Isms and Acronyms’ try to get the better of me, I gathered the equipment for the tutorials I had planned.

If you’re not too sure how ADHD works, here is an example.

One day, I was taking the recycling out when I remembered that I needed to empty the tumble drier. I set the recycling down in the middle of the hallway, went outside and threw my clothes away. I only realised what I’d done when I found myself trying to iron an empty Cornflakes box in my pants. The most amusing part of all this is the fact that you think that I do ironing…

Saturday was bright if a little chilly and I was excited to be back on the bank with my friends. The turnout was lower than I’d hoped for with only six juniors booking in. This dropped to five when Alexander called in sick. I did hear two alternative rumours about why he was absent, however.

One was that he was in the middle east setting off fireworks, and the other was that he refused to attend because there was an absence of catering facilities which is the now the foundation of all his future match strategies.

Get well soon little man…

Juniors attending today were

Seth (Mr Nonchalant) Hopkins.

Josh (Let’s not talk about Revels) Roe.

Mia (Princess Fluffy Socks) Evans.

Austin (The Sherpa) Scott-Kennedy.

Freddie (Stinky Bait) Campbell.

Your ’Paddle’ of coaches (The correct collective noun for a group of six angling coaches) today were

Graham Howard – Big Chief Running Mouth.

Tim Broughton – Captain Pugwash

Jon Bass – The Slender Man

John Evans – Kindergarten Coach

Lloyd Richards – The Keeper of the Soiled Pot

Neil Haine – The Hairy Protest

The lake looked stunning for the time of year and the only blight on the day was a ‘Feathery Black Death’ sitting high in a tree upon my arrival. I politely called to the Cormorant and asked if he wouldn’t mind awfully moving on and invited him/her to leave the lake at his earliest convenience. (I may have used fewer words than this).

It squawked and headed off in the direction of Sliverlake…

With all arrivals arrived, it was tutorial time. Rather than bleat about it all here, I will write it all out on a PDF and post it into the WhatsApp group and on the (new) website.

I think it went well. It was Seth that gave me the ‘you have 30-seconds left’ warning when he yawned so long and hard that I could have performed minor dental surgery on him… So, I sent them back to their swims to digest all this new information…

The Waggler tutorial had profound influence on Seth as he landed an 11lb Carp on the feeder. A fish that was a new PB for him, Well done! Having never seen Luckfield before, this was a great start to the day. He backed that up with some other decent fish to end the day top scorer had it have been a match. Seth’s casting is coming along well and improves a little more each time. I think I’m right in saying he had a decent Bream and an F1 too…

Josh had brought with him an interesting display of micro bacteria and penicillin thinking it was show and tell day. I promised I wouldn’t mention the drubbing he’d received at Revels recently. No one likes to be constantly reminded about being soundly thrashed, especially when it was your dad that did it, and there is absolutely no need to put it to print or on a blog. No doubt that the TWO junior trophies that Josh has won this season will be stood against Martin’s ONE at the presentation evening in a few weeks’ time.

Josh executed a successful Waggler session as well as a few on the pole including a couple of Tench.

Talking of Tench, this was the one fish that Mia wanted to catch today and which, unfortunately, managed to evade her yet again. If I was going to be picky, I might say that sitting on your box and looking at your float for more than 7% of the day would help. But, obviously, I wouldn’t. Complaining that you’re cold wearing short white fluffy socks and rolled up trousers won’t win many sympathy points either, but each to their own. I’m waiting for Preston Innovations to bring some horse blinkers and a neck brace to help her focus a little more…

Talking of Preston Innovations, who knew that John Evans was such a babe-magnet?

Literally!

It took three burly men and a tranquilizer dart to get him to hand back the latest junior back to his mum! Harlen Scott-Kennedy is still a little young for the juniors yet. I think I’ll wait a bit longer before trying to shove the shotting conversion table down his throat…

Fair play to Austin, he was the only junior that only brought a waggler rod today so he could get some practice in using it. You have to admire that. A reduced tackle practice is hard, especially when others may be catching around you. But, he made it work catching a couple of Tench and F1’s, as well as the usual 4 billion small silver fish. (possible exaggeration). With a second place in a senior match under his belt recently, it is going to be interesting to see how he performs for the rest of the DDAS year and into the new project. Also kudos to him for tackling the mountainous peg 6 with it’s two base camps and many treacherous ledges. The lad did well to get out of there on his own whilst we all stood and watched…

Lastly, the Campbell soups were in peg 9 and struggling a little bit at the start. To be fair, I didn’t really need to encourage the Cormorant to leave by shouting at it. One whiff of Freddies bait had most birds fleeing the area for a radius of around 5-miles. With an exclusion zone for land mammals of 2-miles. To be honest, I couldn’t stand it for long. I choked out some advice from my sore and fizzing lungs before I passed out and was dragged from the scene. I think it helped because they managed a couple of ‘proper fish’ by the end. Freddie did scowl at me because his dad caught their biggest fish whilst Freddie was attending my second tutorial about ‘Bomb and bread’.

Oops…

The Bomb tutorial will also be available on PDF, the website, and in all good book shops across the globe.

Bog tent part deux:

As mentioned, practice with the bog tent made life easier and made me look like a legend if only in my own lunchtime. ‘Bluey’ came down a treat. Nice and easy.

BUT!

I did lay it on particularly muddy piece of ground to fold it away. Whoever gets it out next time (Probably me), should know that it is mud on the tent, not a faecal Jackson Pollock painting. It is also on the outside of the tent. Unless I am very wrong and one of the three ladies present has catastrophically misread the bog tent instructions…

Extra good boy points to Lloyd who made the mistake for the second time in a row of offering to help me with the Thunder Pot. I will share the chores more thinly in future, I promise.

At the end of the session and after everyone had left to ruin their suspension along the track (It is being done soon, honestly!), Nice bloke Tim got out his bait boat to show us some doughnuts on the water. I have christened the boat HMS Troutbridge. (If you know, you know!). Being super high tech it yielded some fascinating results about depths and bottom strata (cheeky!). All of which will be available on Tim’s ‘Only Fans’ site soon… It was fun to watch, but I’m not sure Tim had to make all the ‘boat noises’ himself as he sailed/drove/flew it across the lake…

Feedback from the tutorials was positive and no one threw anything or heckled me (much)… It was great to be back!

Copious thanks to Lloyd, Neil, Tim, Jon & John for all your help today…

To everyone that has them, I need the trophies back ASAP please. I only have one so far (thank you Mia). The next event is on the 14th of March at Todber Manor for a practice/coaching session. Let’s get some more back for then please…

If you cannot attend, then please drop the trophies to me at home.

23 Alfred Place, Dorchester, DT1 1NW…

We are on our way to celebrating the twilight of the DDAS Juniors and all it has achieved.

Soon we will be ready to welcome the sunrise of our exciting new project, and I cannot wait!

Until next time…

The Mud-Slinger…