My debut at the Wharf for a match held by Glamorgan Anglers Club. Never having been to Cardiff (apart from watching Chelsea at Ninian Park in the '80s and two recent trips to Ikea) my knowledge of the area was minimal. I demonstrated this by arriving in plenty of time, but with no one else parked I phoned the organiser to discover I was in the wrong car park. Some general directional instructions were givenand a panicked race around the local roads (observing the new Welsh speed limit of 20mph, of course) and I just about arrived in time for the draw, but this was a harbinger of what was to follow.

I'd kept my fishing umbrella in the car upon realising it was all concrete banking. But with 5 minutes to go of our hours preparation the rain started, proper wet Welsh rain and I knew I had to make to improvision with the brolly else it night be a very long 6 hours. 

I got back from the long walk to collect it having sacrificed the first 5 minutes of the match. My first cast, with umbrella pole pinched between my knees, generated a massive birds nest on the spool. Having pulled over 20 hands of line out to clear it, inevitably winding it back brought a major knot I'd been fearing, so had to be broken and the feeder retrieved slowly by hand. Having tackled up again, the rain dripping of the edge of the brolly on me with my every move, my second cast cracked-off. I finally made a cast, and winding it in to pump out more bait for the promised shoals of big, hungry bream, found the hook link had tangled with my in-line rig so I retackled for a third time, switching to a paternoster. All retied, I wound in the slack to prepare to cast to find that the main line was somehow broken and while the reel-end line got tangled around the spool, the feeder, hook, swivel and stops plopped irretrievably into the depths just 3ft from the bank.

Half hour in, I'd had made one cast with a tangled rig, lost two feeders and associated terminal tackle and my maggots were now damp and climbing out of their box. 

I decided that the fish gods wanted me to float fish, so I float fished. With the brolly perching precariously over me, and liable to swing ungainly with the merest change in wind speed or direction, it was a little awkward to say the least, and nothing surprised me more than when I quite quickly got a bite and suddenly there was a 2oz roach in the keep net. At least I wouldn't blank. The remaining time was a case of trying to stay as unsoaked as possible while ensuring the brolly did not blow into the water yet keeping one hand free to hold the rod. In this Heath-Robinson way I managed another 9 roach (between 2 and 6 ounces) and 2 perch of a similar stamp. Plenty shook themselves off the hook (I was rueing having no micro-barbed hooks) but there was one highlight in the form of an eel, maybe about a pound, which probably made up about half of my weight, if I'd been arsed to weigh it in. I'm pretty sure I'd come last, but it was still a day's fishing and a venue I'll return too.