On a recent trip to Melton Pit in the deepest south, scene of the first live reports to FISHINGmagic.com, editor Graham Marsden and mates Dave Colclough, Dave Dowding and Eddie Bibby were forced to fish swims that were quite close together. In fact the local council paid us a visit because someone had reported a gypsy encampment. It didn’t help when they spotted Dave’s D and C emerging from their bivvies with a basket of pegs each.
We were lucky enough to witness the birth of a nestful of ducklings, seeing the broken egg shells being kicked out of the nest. Dave C and Ed were particularly fascinated with the event, Dave being a big duck fan (his usual score in most games) and Ed was heard to remark that if they were supposed to be ugly then he didn’t feel so bad after all. The following day the mother duck took them into the water for the first time, Ed saying, ‘Oh look, they can swim!’ Coming from Liverpool he’s not really a country boy. 
Dave (The Flave) Dowding, aka Mr Wriggles, aka’ I’ll buy it’, brought his usual breakfast menu of a bottle of whisky but then went and finished it in two meals. So the rest of us chipped in and bought five litres of bitter to share between us.
‘That’s not my favourite brew,’ he said, ‘but it’ll do.’ Just about managing to gurgle the words out as the container tipped back and five litres of best bitter disappeared down a gullet flapping faster than a bee’s wings. 
‘Not bad’, he said, wiping his mouth on the back of a hand permanently stained with robin red, and screwing the cap back on the empty container. ‘Did anybody else want any?’
The first day of these long trips is always the worst, specially when you start out at 2.30am following a late night. Ed suffered the worst, having to travel the farthest, and for the first two days resembled a panda. Not a giant panda, but an old, tired one that’s seen better days.
GM, who didn’t catch the most fish on this trip, did come out best in another event. The new toilets on the site hadn’t yet got running water and had to be flushed with a bucket of water from a tub. There were two buckets, a two gallon red one, and a five gallon white one. Course, it didn’t take long for some bright spark, Dave C, to come back from a visit and boast about having to use three red buckets to flush the toilet. At the end of the three days I was proclaimed as Top S*** following a two large white bucket flush. Talk about being competitive! 
You know what we found is most strange about Suffolk? Nobody will admit to coming from there. Over five trips so far we’ve got talking to what we assumed were the locals and they all say more or less the same thing. ‘Oh, I’ve lived here for 73 years but I’m from London really.’
We have yet to meet someone who will actually admit to being born and bred in Suffolk.
We caught bream to 10lb 10oz, carp to 18lb 11oz, and some nice tench, but nothing like what we expected from this prolific water that can produce more than that in one night. However, that we enjoyed ourselves goes without saying, and we received a really nice comment from Dave Dowding who said in a later e-mail: ‘……one thing I must mention is the sheer amount of enthusiasm you all shared with me on my new personal best (10lb 10oz bream). It meant just as much as the fish to me. I’m more used to being scowled at when I hit good fish.’
And Dave’s wife Toni said: ‘Every time he goes fishing with you lot he comes back so relaxed and laid back that you should be available on the NHS.’
And that means a lot to us Dave. Having fun is far more important than catching fish. The trick is to combine the two.
