Competitive Dad and Birthday Cake

Last weekend was my birthday so I thought I’d treat myself to a days fishing. The day was topped off with an hilarious episode of Competitive Dad and birthday cake!

After much deliberation I decided on an old haunt of mine……..Sutton Bingham reservoir. I hadn’t fished here for a few years now for one reason or another but still had fond memories of some great days here.

I pulled up at the fishing lodge about 8.00am to be greeted with a howling blustery wind and bright sunshine, not conducive for a great days sport but I was willing to give it a bash anyway, so I got my permit, had a quick chat with the ranger on hot spots and I was off.

It was one of those days when I had wished I had tied up some tapered leaders at home instead of trying to make them up on the bank in a strong wind. In fact the wind got so strong that white horses were appearing across the water, the casting was certainly going to be interesting!

White horses starting to appear!

The reservoir is relatively shallow over its expanse and hosts a wide variety of insect life, with this in mind I opted with a three fly set up with the usual suspects of Buzzers, Diawl Bachs and Crunchers. I positioned a heavy Buzzer on the point to try and get the flies down and stabilise the set up, then just cast it out across the wind and just kept in touch with the flies with a slow figure of eight retrieve as the wind fished the set up around for me.

Ten minutes in and the line tightened and I lifted into the first fish of the day, a stock fish of around a couple of pounds. Maybe it wasn’t going to be such a tough day after all? The next hour passed with a few half hearted taps at the flies but no hook ups.

A near “fin perfect” rainbow.

I kept moving trying to find some fish, changed tactics, lures on all manner of density of lines and every fly combination you could think of but the fishing was pretty patchy to say the least but this is what I had expected and I can’t complain as I managed to winkle out three fish by the end of the session.

The highlight of the day came when two sailing boats appeared in front of me while I was having a coffee. Does anyone remember a character called “Competitive Dad”? I think he was from “The Fast Show” with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Well here he was in front of me in a boat with his two kids in a smaller boat!!

“Competitive Dad” with the kids.

He spent twenty minutes shouting instructions to his kids and getting frustrated when they totally ignored him and carried on doing their own thing and having fun. Then the dad said to them “we will have a race back to the sailing club house”, with this the kids made a few adjustments, spun the boat around and were off, seeing this “competitive dad” tried to make the same manouver and proceeded to capsize his craft, then followed loud shouts from the water of “come back, we haven’t started yet!” Needless to say the children just carried on leaving the dad stranded in the water and shouting at the top of his voice!! I think I concealed my joy of the situation very well!

The day was rounded of nicely when I got home to a very special birthday cake, well you won’t all agree on that one but I am a true blue supporter!

If Carlsberg made birthday cakes……….