as one door closes

As one door closes another door opens?!
It is with mixed feelings that I write this my last piece in the Wakefield Region newsletter, I have very fond memories of my all too short time with the region & consider you all to be my friends. You have restored my faith in PAC regions, my last encounter with the regional scene was some 15 years ago, which was a bitter sweet experience, however that was a different region in the distant past. Life changes & I now find myself spending more time nearer to home (Wigan ‘over t hill’), this means that I will no longer be able to make my frequent visits to the Wakefield region & I would no longer be able to give the input to the club that I would like to. An opportunity has arisen for me to resurrect an old PAC region, region 31, the one that I was first a member of as a junior member. So I will be becoming an R/O!
There is currently no active PAC region in the Wigan area & the area has been much in need of a PAC region for too long. Some match clubs still kill pike en-masse & pike welfare by those who fish for them can leave a lot to be desired. I have agreed with Pete & Mick to have a ‘Cross Pennines’ outing (South Lancs. ‘V’ Wakefield) & I will provide a trophy for this, I would like to see this become an annual event & would like to foster a link between the two regions for mutual benefit.
I look forward to picking the 2006 trophies at the September meeting, which will be a last as a Wakey member for me. I have made an entry for the Wakey club awards (2007-2008) as it was a fish I caught back in April, it’s a 23.7, caught on a lure, I was particularly proud of this fish as it was from Coniston & anyone who fishes there will know that whilst it’s a good doubles water 20+ fish are VERY rare on their & what few that are caught tend to be scraper 20’s, so I guess that gives you lads something to aim for with biggest fish & best lure caught fish. It really has been a pleasure knowing & fishing with each & everyone of you lads, you are all a credit to the good name of the PAC. It is more of a ‘see you soon mucker’ rather than a goodbye as I will be doing a slideshow for you in February, a few of the lads have asked me about fishing in the Lake district & North Wales so I will include some slides to cover that for you as well as lots of other stuff. If any of you lads are venturing to these areas then you are welcome to get in touch & have a trip with me no problem at all.
I have as always been out there fishing hard (although not as much as I would like), doing two boats up since March a 14ft high sided dell-quay dory & a Shetland 498 cabin boat & arranging my immanent house move have taken up most of my time over the last 6 months. I’ve also just started another project namely refurbishing two old fibreglass rods, a couple of 25+ year old North-Western blanks an SS6 & a SC7, I’m going to refurbish these & put them back into service, I had my 1st 20+ pike on an SS6 I built myself when I was 13, I also had a SC7 again a home made job & I took pike to 18 ½ on that so it will be a bit of nostalgia for my using these classic rods!
I have been doing a bit of pioneering, mainly short sessions after work or a few hours here & there with the occasional full day or weekend thrown in & enduring some gruelling blanks, however I have had some good hard fighting summer pike from the waters from the Lake district to North-Wales, Wigan to Wakefield. I have done some articles in P&P which you may have read as well as a chapter in the PAC’s 30TH anniversary book PAC 30.
What a busy activity being an R/O for the PAC is a room to book for meetings & then there is getting a projector, arranging speakers, arranging club outings, obtaining trophies, someone has donated a club boat to me so I’ve had to do that up a bit & arrange insurance. I’ve already received calls from local lads in Wigan asking what the club can do about the problem of the polish eating the fish from local waters, a PAC member from Scotland is coming down to fish for carp & pike in my area & rang asking for advise, the local organiser of the NAC & ZAC has been in touch to see if the clubs can network for mutual benefit. Myself & Eric Edwards are holding an ‘introduction into pike angling’ for newcomers & juniors on a local water & that has taken a fair bit of organising. So I take my hat off to Pete, Mick & all the other R/O’s up & down the country for all their hard work & effort & think that quite often we can take the hard work & effort that goes on behind the scenes for granted.
Attached is a photo of the one to beat to wet you appetites for the season, I have also included a short summary of the summer lure event on the river hull.
Tight lines & a prosperous season for you all
Jon Neafcy
Living the dream!
Lure outing
River Hull
I was working the Saturday day & I rushed down after work, I called in at Hornsea Mere on the way to check that out & I will have a day there sometime. Anyway I managed to find the venue despite Pete’s directions! (No chance of that job with Ordinance Survey for you then Pete!) joking aside I enjoyed the event. It was a nice to fish with you all again & it was a nice evening for it. All manner of creatures were used to thrash the water with foam, however we were lacking a lure expert (where was Mick?) & the cunning Essox in the river preferred to eat the shoals of roach that were evident rather than chomp on a piece of wood or plastic & who can blame them! Myself & Pete had a few casts for a decent pike that had gone into the back drain but sadly our efforts to catch it on our lures failed as it happily chomped on the roach shoaled up in the drain. Andy Naylor totally gave up with the lure fishing (a wise move on this occasion) preferring to free line a dead-bait under a weed bed & this cunning improvisation paid off with two hard fighting pike. The jury was out on if Andy should receive the trophy or not, but as no one else caught & I’m not too big on too many rules anyway I though he deserved it. So how’s that a man who won a lure trophy for 2 fish caught on dead baits! James wanted half the trophy though because Andy caught the fish on his Smelt & his wire trace! (I’d say Andy owes you for a packet of Smelt & a wire trace as well as a couple of pints mate). There were certainly pike about & the river does them to 30+ so they will be there for next time…………………………………………………………………………………..