Blogs are for blogging, so I'll blog.

Finally the rains came

I don't think I've got much to write about. Hang on, that will mean this entry is as long as the rest and I'll rattle on about something, of which at this very second I have no idea what that will be. So yeah, nothing much to write about. Why do I always feel like I'm waiting for some part of the year that always seems so far away? I'm waiting for proper piking weather. Not the depths of winter, I'm not wishing the sun away so soon, I would just like it a bit cooler, the odd bit of rain to keep some water in the rivers every now and again. For the last month or two it's been like a proper summer, there's been no rain and the river has been that low I keep expecting to see the pike beached somewhere and the spiky dorsal of the perch cutting the water every where I look.  Anyway, finally after weeks and weeks we had some rain, and boy did it rain. We had a bit of hurricane Bertha smack us right in the face, tail end my arse. For a full on hour it rained so hard even the streets around me on top of a hill were flooded. The 20mph speed restricting chicanes on the road created something the slalom canoeists would have loved as river rapids raged down the main road. At the bottom of the hill in town cars were underwater, the local tackle shop owner was fishing in the streets and Neil was planning a porte boat session up his street if it got any worse. I also managed to capture a lightening strike on film. The rains cleared, to be replaced by and epic lightning show in the sky. After all that, the river rose, peaked and dropped again over night. Not a sustained flood but at least it got a wash through.

 
I didn't even get on it. I ended working an extra night shift over the weekend and then a mixture of being too busy and not been arsed to get out because of something more important than fishing, of which I will explain later. I did grab a short hour one day midweek when it was cool and another hour another day to do a bit of filming. I decided to knock up a lure video to answer those unanswerable questions. What's your favourite lure? Which lure catches most fish? What's the best lure for pike? and so on. I decided the best answer, a go to lure for me, was the Savage Gear Lowrider. A lure that can often trigger a hit when everything else seems to be failing. A lure that will catch fish so if you have one and you are struggling, whip it out and use it and only it, you will catch. So On that hot day I got on the bank and just filmed me talking for a bit about the lure and you can see that video below if you wish. The day when it was a bit cooler I had a few fish. I had the ultra light rod, a tiny 2 inch kopyto and I was looking for the perch. But me being me though, that meant I ended up with nine pike and a tiny perch. Can't complain, I do like pike.

So a few weeks have passed and I haven't done too much at all. I never really like the full on summer, it's too hot, not piking weather and the banks are either full of other anglers on the popular stretches or an absolute nightmare on the unpopular stretches as there's nine foot of growth everywhere and just walking 50yards takes an hour and 19,000 calories. I sweat enough at work (not cos I work my balls off but because it's already hot) so me working up another sweat for fun is not on my agenda. That's where getting out on the boat with Woody works perfectly for us but to be honest we haven't really done too much. Woody was sorting his engine and so the last couple of times we haven't really gone at it serious and then more recently I've been working or otherwise engaged so not been at all. That needs to change, we need to fish.

So what, apart from sun, work and lack of being arsed on my part has kept me away from fishing? What is so important that I would turn my nose up at a much awaited river running off or a chillaxing session with Woody and Tyke on the boat bagging fish after fish? The other love of my life which I have touched on occasionally though never probably gone in to detail with. I'm a northerner, a Yorkshireman and us proper northern Yorkshire men love rugby league. Flat caps, pigeons, whippets and rugby league. Actually most of that lot isn't so much the case for us Yorkies unless you're from Featherstone and then it's still all of them in that case. Not to be mistaken with the posh southern sport of Rugby Union, this game is played by coal miners, steel workers and anyone who spits and swears for a living. Hang on a minute, like the whippets, all that's changed now too. We have a game fit for TV now with super human athletes who run and bash each other non stop for 80 minutes, with a bit of biff and some cracking entertainment to boot. If you haven't yet discovered it, tune in to Sky Sports on a Thursday and Friday evening (days subject to change because Sky piss us about all the time) and we even make the good old BBC sometime, last weekend being one and weekend after next being another. (Read on)

My other love is Castleford Tigers. A small town team holding our own in the top league. It's like Blackburn Rovers or Huddersfield in the Premier League, with the exception that those towns are probably five times bigger than my tiny town. Ok league isn't anywhere near as big as football and since in the main it is confined to the M62 corridor and Yorkshire and Lancashire there's not a full nation of towns and cities to compete with. Still, it's a tough life kicking it with the big boys like Leeds and Wigan (pah! Wigan. *lolz* We smacked them in the quarter final at their place.) and for the last ten years it's been frigging hard. Relegation, promotion and then relegation again for us to claw back up to the top tear where we've lived 99% of our life. Money comes hard and we've struggled to compete but this season, this season it has been different. We're only kicking ass! We're fecking spanking them all you know. Only a couple of points off the top with a few games to go and in with a chance of winning it. But forget that, at least for now, we're fucking off to Wembley you know! We're fucking off to Wembley!

Last weekend I didn't fish because we had a massive semi final against Widnes Vikings and we cruised it, winning easily and sending my tiny town mental. We've got Wembley fever here and I can't even think about fishing. They say if you are not fishing you are thinking about fishing. Not for me old lad, we're off to Wembley. We're the famous Castleford Tigers and we're off to Wembley! And guess what, guess who we play? We play that big city team, our long time rival, the dirty Leeds Rhinos. The place is going to be packed and this tiny town of mine will be a ghost town. Every man, woman and child will be there, wearing black and amber and singing our hearts out. Come on your 'Ford! Tune in to BBC1 on Saturday 23rd August, wear anything you have that is black and amber and if you haven't got that, yellow or orange will do. Cheer on my boys, the tiny town underdogs against the big city bastards. Be a Cas fan for the day, and I promise you this, you'll be a Cas fan for life afterwards.

Here's a picture of me from the last time I visited the capital.