Lavender Farm. Match Lake. February 9th, 2003.

Hawthorne AC club match.

7am in the “Little Thief” for a full English breakfast, and looking out of the windows at the driving wind & rain. It’s at times like this that you start to question your own sanity .
Arriving in the car park at Lavender Farm, there were 14 other lunatics assembled to fish this club match on the Match Lake, a rather exposed “snake” venue.

Into the drawbag and 15 stuck to my already wet hand, and after walking round I was thanking my lucky stars that at least the wind was coming from behind me. The peg is regarded as a bit of a flyer in Summer, owing to the island at 12mtrs but has no winter form at all.

Out at 12mtrs nothing was having it despite a softly softly approach, and with the wind veering around constantly presentation was difficult to say the least. Plumbing around earlier I had noticed that the deepest part of the swim was at only 3mtrs and had set up a dead depth rig for this, and with nothing at 12mtrs after 2 hours this was the line I switched to.
The recent cold weather had taken a lot of colour out off the water, but with a squatt cup I trickled in 5 maggots and a pinch of fishmeal every 5mins, and after 30 mins the float buried and a small Carp of about 1lb was netted.

For the next couple of hours I managed to get another 14 fish upto about 3lbs and then that line dried up. For the last hour, try as I might I couldn’t buy another bite. At the end I managed to put 31lbs on the scales, and was comfortably in first place, right up until the final 2 pegs were weighed in and a 38lbs & 50lbs were put on the scales.

Still, no complaints, as I felt I’d got the maximum available from the peg on the day and nobody near me had got within 20lbs of my weight, and at least I managed to pick up some coin to cover expenses.

Tylers Common. Willow Lake. February 2nd, 2003.

Hawthorne AC 

AT Supercup match.

Well today was the day of our 1st round match in this years Angling Times/Van Den Eynde Supercup.
For reasons best known to the Angling Times, this year instead of being drawn against another team from Kent we had been drawn away against Palmers Green Angling Society From North London.

Their 1st choice of venue, The Grand Union Canal at Berkhampstead was unavailable so they switched the tie to the Horseshoe Match Lake at Tylers Common in Essex, A venue that none of us from Hawthorne had seen yet alone fished.

To make matters worse on arrival the Match Lake was frozen solid, and the match was transferred to two adjoining lakes on the venue.
Fine you may think except we had been given some very good advise with regard to rigs and bait needed for the match lake where a 12oz fish was considered a big bonus, and were now confronted with two lakes supposedly heavily stocked with large Carp, Bream and Tench.

Well the draw was made and we all made our way to our pegs, and tried to assemble enough kit between us to tackle the pegs we were faced with.
Now can someone please tell me why a commercial fishery that charges £7 a peg can’t provide decent paths and solid pegs????????
Almost without exception everyone found themselves sitting in a sea of mud and standing water.



The match itself was absolutely DIRE with a howling wind making the temp of +3C feel more like -5C, and making pole fishing all but impossible in most pegs!!!!!!!!

3 hours into the match and NOBODY had had so much as a bite, and then one of the Palmers Green lads caught a Carp of around a couple of pounds.
Efforts were redoubled, Surely 1 fish would not be enough to win the match? If we could just get 1 fish then we would be in with a chance.
Sure enough with just 10mins to go, Paul Ollerenshaw (our club champ) could be seen very gingerly playing a fish,and while our whole team collectively held it’s breath (and the other team probably willed him to lose it) up came the landing net with the fish in it.
Now for the moment of truth, The weigh-in……… With 10 blank sections, and one fish in each of the remaining 2 it was all down to weight.
First to weigh-in was the Palmers Green angler and his Carp weighed in at 1lb 15ozs, now across to the other side of the fishery, and Paul’s Carp was obviously larger and took the scales round to 4lbs 3ozs 8drms.

It has to be said that Palmers Green anglers are a superb bunch of lads, who despite their obvious disappointment, shook hands in congratulation and wished us well in further rounds. The whole atmosphere of the match was so friendly that plans are already afoot to invite them down to our neck of the woods sometime in the summer for a days “baggin” .

So that’s it, Hawthorne AC are through to the next round.