Oh Lord, I've done some dumb things down to this sport and this morning I reached new heights / depths.
My first "proper" trip to the new "local" tackle shop. Admittedly, I went in tooled up as I needed a new seatbox. They did their best to steer me towards a Frenzee model at £350 but, no, the business genius in me had to have the Daiwa 500 model at £500.
So far, so good. That was when the willpower went the way of an England batting performance on a bad day in India. You may remember, dear reader, a couple of weeks back I was kicking my Shimano Beastmaster pole into the doldrums?
For reasons I cannot ever hope to fathom, it suddenly became the most pressing engagement of my adult life and, having already read some rave reviews, I just had to have the Preston Response (didn't they get THAT right?) M70 pole. I did maintain enough common sense to get them to elasticate it, as it's a job I detest with complete passion. I sat, drank a coffee and wondered how to sneak it past the current future ex Mrs.
A quick phone call to her to assert my Alpha Male rights and privileges and I drove to the fave commercial to road test both items of kit. It could only be a couple of hours but better than nothing.
Upon arrival, I set up using a Preston hollow core elastic for munter huntin and a ready tied rig that's served me well recently, a Middy Carp dibber to 9lb main and a 7.6lb trace and a 14.
A while ago, I noted the step up from 6mm cubed spam to 10mm definitely put the skimmers off so I opened a tinny and knife cut half a can to the required size.
After plodding out a cup of hemp via the cupping kit, I pushed the meat out and settled back to await events.
Sure enough, the first customer was the usual, a common around 5lbs which fought well. I was more than pleased with the pole. Not since the original Preston PXR reels have I found kit that felt like it was made for me.
A second followed some twenty minutes later, a shade bigger, a pound or so. Again, a good fight but the pole performed superbly.
With the unsettled conditions, sport was slowish and nothing followed for half an hour or so until a third, a sprightly mirror around a pound and a half quickly followed by a similar specimen a shade more at two pounds or so. Having a lot to do, I decided that one more fish was all the test I could conduct today and another half hour or so later, the float dipped again and a mirror around five pounds was soon netted.
So, that was it for today. Well pleased. Arriving home, I found the old adage of Who Dares, Wins applied in full. I got a text, she was in Morrison's and did I want anything? Yes, actually, I wanted to quickly smuggle my new prize to my tackle room which was duly accomplished.
Michael Caine's Self Preservation Society then took over and I remembered a conversation a few months back when I mentioned the absolute lack of quality of the pole holdall that came with the Shimano, I mean it was bad enough to have finished below Villa this year. The Preston holdall was merely a replacement (well, it's kind of true....) if questions followed.
Her only comment on the Daiwa box was that it was a nice shade of red. Can't wait to get out there properly next week and run the pole out again.
Till then, adieu.
